


The Wolves of Rothsburg

by DetectiveRoboRyan



Category: Fire Emblem Echoes: Mou Hitori no Eiyuu Ou | Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia, Fire Emblem Series
Genre: (I did not win), Also Single Parent AU I Guess, Alternate Universe - 1920s, Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Crime, Detectives, Drama, F/F, F/M, I'd tag more but that'd spoil everything, My Name is Ryan and in My Spare Time I Write Novels, Mystery, Written for NaNoWriMo
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-19
Updated: 2019-01-19
Packaged: 2019-10-12 19:23:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 21,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17473532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DetectiveRoboRyan/pseuds/DetectiveRoboRyan
Summary: It's 1921 in the port city of Rothsburg, Zofia, and trouble is afoot. The city as of late has been awash with mysterious disappearances, and the frequency of these cases has only increased in the past six months, completely swamping the Rothsburg Police. When prominent businessman Albein Markel ends up the latest victim, it doesn't take his wife Anthiese very long to realize that nothing will get done if she doesn't get outside help.Enter private investigator Mae Valentine, who has a nose for trouble and an impeccable instinct. She and her partner, Boey Dimitris, are exactly what Mrs. Rothschild-Markel needs to find her missing husband. However, the case is much more complex than it seems. With every avenue Mae and Boey pursue, it just opens up more questions and links to a case twenty-five years closed-- the sudden death of Mrs. Rothschild-Markel's father, Lima Rothschild-- and reigniting tensions between the Rothschilds and the Markels.But while Mae and Boey are unearthing these secrets, something else lurks just out of sight. Will Mae's gut be able to lead her through the smokescreen, or will the people of Rothsburg end up thrown to the wolves?





	1. The House on June Street

On May 12th, 1921, private detective Mae Valentine was not hired to investigate a murder.  
  
The day began with a lovely spring morning in the busy modern city of Rothsburg, Zofia. The sun rose, illuminating the roofs of the buildings and casting shadows over the Archanean Sea. Around the city, the sunrise started to wiggle its fingers through windows on the western side of homes and businesses, waking the birds from their slumber and shining blithely into the eyes of those unfortunate enough to have their pillows right by the window. They’d curse the sunlight, no doubt, but the sun did not care, because ultimately it was not the sun’s fault that that was where they’d chosen to put their pillow.  
  
As the morning wore on, the city awoke. Milk and ice vans rumbled out from the warehouse on their morning routes, the inter-city train line puffed out of the station, and ships at the dockyards began loading or unloading their goods. Slowly, Rothsburg’s streets filled with pedestrians, bicycles, automobiles, and trucks, the noises of footsteps and chatter, of pigeons cooing and doorbells chiming, of car horns and cart vendors and voices and lives, all going on all at once on another day in the city of Rothsburg. Another day, just as the last had been, and just as the next would be.  
  
On one of the quieter residential streets, the day went on— just as yesterday had and just as tomorrow would. The street was lined with leafy cypress trees that shaded the brickwork paving from the sun. Its houses were pretty but not grand, their owners wealthy but not obscenely so, teetering on the edge between the rich folk and the fledgling middle class. The street was called June Street and it was of little consequence to most, with the understandable exceptions of the people who lived there.  
  
That morning, the same as the last was and as the next would be, Sister Silque picked up the morning milk from where the milkman set it on the doorstep of the house on June Street. Silque was a woman of humble beginnings, humble middles, and most likely humble ends who was trained as a nurse, certified as a pastor, and employed as a housekeeper, and overall fairly plain. This suited her just fine, as she’d never seen fit to dream far beyond her station. Whatever goals she’d ever held, she kept safely locked away where she never had to deal with them, and focused on what really mattered— her job, which she was quite good at, if she did say so herself. She was the one and only member of the staff employed by the Valentine household, and thus served as whatever the Valentines needed her to be. Usually that involved being a nursemaid, though Silque was the kind of woman who didn’t like jobs going undone when there was someone there to do them, so it more often involved cooking, cleaning, mending, and other errands the homeowners could not do.  
  
It wasn’t a bad job, all things considered, especially when Silque’s employer happened to be a close friend. That made things a little easier in most regards.  
  
Silque was the only member of the household who was awake at that point, but by that point the sun had risen quite a bit and the time of day had gone from “the break of dawn” to “almost breakfast time.” As she had yesterday and would the day following, Silque picked up the milk, showed the kind iceman where to put the ice, and opened up all the downstairs shutters to let the morning light in before starting to make breakfast— brewing coffee, frying eggs, and baking bread for toast. The household cat, a very fat cat that resembled a large potato in both shape and coloring, woke from his slumber at the smell and waddled into the kitchen to investigate, rubbing against Silque’s shin and purring sweetly, as if he could sucker an early breakfast out of her by way of affection alone.  
  
“Yeast,” Silque chided. “You know better than that.”  
  
Yeast assuredly had no idea what she was talking about, and only continued to purr. Silque sighed deeply, wondering not for the first time why she let herself be manipulated by a house cat, and set a saucer full of cream down on the floor for him. Yeast immediately forgot all about Silque, abandoning her in favor of his breakfast, as house cats were wont to do.  
  
Silque was not the only early riser in the house. Upstairs, she heard the shuffling of footsteps, the creak of a bed frame, the sound of a desk chair dragged across the rug. Silque paused, letting the bacon on the stove sizzle, listening for the typical clacking of typewriter keys.  
  
When the clacking began, Silque sighed, took a broom, and bonked on the ceiling. “Breakfast before work,” she called, knowing Boey could hear her through the floor. She didn’t hear his sigh, but she did hear the typewriter keys stop, and the chair scrape against the rug once more. Satisfied, Silque went back to cooking. Yeast sneezed, shaking the last drops of cream off his face, and jumped up onto the counter to sniff at the bacon and try to snag a piece. Silque picked him up by the scruff of his neck and tossed him towards the pantry.  
  
A minute later, Silque heard thumping down the stairs. The man making the thumps scowled halfheartedly at Silque when he came into the kitchen, his hair still messy from sleep and his chin unshaven, wearing a thick green bathrobe over his blue-striped pajamas.  
  
“Coffee’s almost ready,” she said. He nodded, taking a mug from the cabinet. His name was Boey Dimitris, and he was not a morning person.  
  
Boey had known his business partner, Mae, for literally as long as they could remember— one of his first memories was of being around three years old and being very confused why this other child was throwing pebbles at him. His father Thomas was a fisherman, like many others on Novis. Tom’s father was a fisherman, too, and so was his father, and his father before. His mother was a teacher, and prominently featured in Boey’s memories as the woman who had punched every degenerate in Novis at least once. (Mae greatly admired Teela Dimitris and this was only one of many reasons why.) Boey Dimitris himself was not a fisherman or a teacher, he was a private cost accountant, and he didn’t really want to be a fisherman or a teacher, so it all worked out. Boey was the kind of person who thought things through— the kind of person who did jigsaw puzzles and read about model trains for fun, and regularly called home because he got homesick easily but pretended it was so he could catch up with his brothers and sister. As such, he made a nice contrast to Mae.  
  
Boey yawned, pouring himself a cup of coffee. Silque handed him the tiny pitcher of cream, like she did every morning, and he poured the cream into his coffee until it was a pale off-beige. He knocked the whole thing back like it was a shot of whiskey rather than mostly cream, and seemed much perkier for it.  
  
He sighed in relief and sat down in a chair in the breakfast room. Yeast meowed, wanting attention, and Boey scratched his ears.  
  
“Pick up the paper yet?” Boey asked while Yeast plopped himself on his placemat and purred.  
  
“Not yet, but Mae probably will,” Silque said. “You know how she likes a little bit of crime first thing in the morning.”  
  
“Well, crime’s kind of her job,” Boey shrugged, trying and failing to push Yeast off the placemat and settling for petting him instead. In the background, the front door creaked open and shut— probably Mae, like Silque had suggested. “And you know how closely she’s had her ear on these missing person cases.”  
  
Silque tutted. “You’d think they’d have found the perp by now, or at least a reason it’s happening,” she said. “It’s been six months.”  
  
“Maybe they’ll make more progress on it now that someone ritzy went missing,” Boey said cynically. “A Markel, no less.”  
  
“Markel? Like the catalogue?” Silque frowned, trying and failing to put a face to the vaguely familiar name. She didn’t follow business news very closely, figuring that she’d hear about anything important from knitting circle gossip— Markel as in Markel’s Monthly catalogue may have been a household name, but the name itself was common enough that there was no way to tell by just the name whether it was catalogue Markel or some other Markel.  
  
“The very same. Apparently, the poor fella disappeared right from his home last week. The younger grandson, by the way, not the grandfather.” Boey’s hand idled. Yeast reached up and swatted it in displeasure. Boey muttered an apology to the cat and kept petting him. And then, like a freight train summoned by the mention of crime, the mistress of the house, Mae Valentine, waltzed into the kitchen like she owned the place— which she did.  
  
Mae Valentine was many things. She was Boey’s best friend since they were three years old, for one, Silque’s foster sister, for another, and unmarried mother to her young son, for a third. She was also the owner of the house, and paid the bills with her private investigative work. Mae was what many would call a firebrand— or a rabble-rouser, snoop, bearcat, or troublemaker, if you weren’t inclined to be nice about it, and while many people were, about the same amount of people were not. In an ideal society, those in the legal business— lawyers, judges, police officers, et cetera— were chosen based on ability to follow, practice, or defend the law rather than personal viewpoint, and would set aside such things in order to do one’s job. Mae Valentine did _not_ live in an ideal society, and while she did her best to investigate suspicious people regardless of their views or her own (I.e., if someone was suspicious, they were suspicious based on contradictory testimonies or odd behavior rather than the fact that their political views were different than Mae’s own), those who sought out her services did not always extend to her the same courtesy, hence the plethora of less-kind terms Mae has heard, some based on any multitude of reasons (Mae did not exactly conform to her society’s expectations for a typical woman of her age and status) and others not.  
  
So in a word, Mae Valentine’s investigative practice was controversial— but at the end of the day, Mae had cultivated a reputation for putting the real criminal in jail, which was far from the worst reputation to have, for a detective. Perhaps she wasn’t world-famous, but for the moment, she made enough to pay for bills, mortgage, wages, and necessities, with enough left over for cat food, business cards, and visits home, and that suited Mae just fine.  
  
Mae plopped the newspaper onto the middle of the kitchen table. Yeast sniffed it, then decided it wasn’t worth his attention. The front-page headline read _MARKEL PRESIDENT STILL MISSING, FOUL PLAY SUSPECTED_ in big black letters across the top of the page, right under _ROTHSBURG DAILY_ and the day’s date. Boey leaned over the cat to skim the story, printed in two columns next to a nice picture of young businessman Albein Markel, second president of Markel Enterprises, just in case the general public had forgotten what he looked like. It was the same picture the Rothsburg Daily had used a few months back, when the first Markel president had retired and his two grandsons took up the mantle— the grandfather, stern-faced but clearly proud, with the elder grandson on the right and the younger grandson on the left, all in expensive suits, with the two younger men shaking hands, all forming a picture that promised stability and cooperation in the Markel business. It’d been big news when it first happened, what with the reins of leadership going from one person to two, but after the novelty wore off, the Markel name stayed out of the front-page media for quite some time— until the youngest Markel vanished from his home without a trace.  
  
“I swear,” Mae began. “We’ve seen twenty of these headlines in the past six months, and I’d bet good cabbage that we’ll see twenty more before the year’s out. Those dime-store dicks in the bull pen just can’t keep up.”  
  
Boey picked up the newspaper and thumbed through it. Silque slid the fried eggs onto the breakfast plates and set them on the placemats— rather, she set one plate on Mae’s placemat, then scooped Yeast into her free arm and set the other plate on Boey’s placemat. Yeast _mrrp_ ed in displeasure and jumped out of Silque’s arm, landing on the floor with the agility of a thin cat and the sound of a fat one, which served him right, since he ought to know by now that he’s not allowed on the table during mealtimes. He did, but it didn’t stop him.  
  
Mae scooped a fried egg onto her fork and shoved the whole thing in her mouth. Unlike Boey, she was at least mostly dressed— her pants and jacket (draped over the back of her chair) were dark green, her shirt (the collar unbuttoned and the sleeves pushed up) was pale pink, and her tie (hanging loose around her neck) was red with little pink flowers. Mae liked men’s clothing better than women’s clothing, generally, but scoffed at the idea that all menswear had to be in dark or neutral colors, and cheerfully drew strange looks wherever she went wearing whatever color or pattern she liked, not caring one bit what anyone said about it.  
  
“Crivens, that’s disgusting,” Boey muttered over the newspaper as Mae slurped the egg white off her lips. “Do you have to do that every time we have fried eggs?”  
  
“Well, no, technically, I don’t have to,” Mae replied. “But I’ll keep doing it as long as you keep beatin’ your gums about it. Anyway, you thought it was funny when we were kids.”  
  
“Unless I’m missing something, we’re not kids anymore,” Boey said, turning the page on the Mr. Markel’s disappearing act and flipping through the paper until he found the stocks.  
  
Mae pouted, only doing so because Silque had gone upstairs to wake Mae’s son and thus wasn’t there to tell her it was childish. (Mae knew perfectly well that it was, but never let it be said that Mae was a paragon of maturity.) “You’re no fun. Tempest likes it.”  
  
“Probably because Tempest is four,” Boey pointed out.  
  
“I don’t see your point.”  
  
“Anyway,” Boey said. “It’s not like you to be dressed this early if you don’t have to be.” He set the paper aside and focused on his breakfast— which he cut into bite-sizes before eating, unlike Mae.  
  
“I was just figuring I’d amble out for a bit,” Mae shrugged. She picked up a strip of bacon with her fingers, folded it in half, stuck it in her mouth, and wiped her fingers on her napkin so Silque wouldn’t know. “Go for a walk downtown. Maybe see what’s on at the pictures.”  
  
“Go looking for trouble, you mean,” Boey said wryly.  
  
Mae grinned cheekily. “Trouble pays the bills, s’all I’m saying. And it’s the reason we’re here now, eating our breakfast in this nice house, setting our own hours and doing as we please, and not back in Novis spreading fertilizer and gutting fish.”  
  
Boey grimaced. It was true, but he hated being reminded of it. “Alright, sure,” he caved. “But if you find us another Mila-forsaken cannery case—“  
  
“No canneries,” Mae promised, holding up her free hand. “Scouts’ honor.”  
  
Boey didn’t really believe her, but it was too early in the morning to say as much. Silque walked in with Tempest, anyway, so any line of thought Mae might’ve had was immediately forgotten. Her face lit up when Silque set him down, swaying on his feet and rubbing his eyes with his tiny fist.  
  
“Morning, little man,” Mae cooed to him. “You hungry?”  
  
Tempest nodded. Tempest wasn’t his legal first name, it was his middle name, which was as good as Mae could get because her ex-wife won that particular argument when it came time to order the birth certificate. But since they’d gotten divorced pretty soon afterwards, Mae figured that she could call her son by the cooler name at least until he was old enough to decide which one he liked better for himself. He seemed to like being called Tempest just fine, but these things are subject to change, so Mae held it loosely. Held less loosely was who he took after— morning sleepiness aside, he had Mae’s energy, empathy, stubbornness, and uncanny ability to give Silque headaches, all wrapped up in soft red-pink curls and blue eyes and dimpled cheeks that he used to his advantage despite knowing he probably shouldn’t have his hand in the cookie jar.  
  
Tempest peered over the breakfast table. He looked around, making sure Silque’s back was turned, and carefully reached for one of the pieces of bacon on Mae’s plate. Humoring him, Mae made a show of stretching and looking out the window, trying very hard not to grin. Tempest quickly snatched the piece of bacon and stuffed it into his mouth.  
  
Silque set a bowl of oatmeal and half a glass of milk at the third place setting and noticed the bacon sticking out of Tempest’s mouth. She sighed. “Tempest, what have I told you about taking food off other peoples’ plates?”  
  
“To mot to,” Tempest sighed with his mouth full.  
  
“And you, Mae,” Silque continued. “You need to stop enabling him.”  
  
“Enabling him to do what?” Mae asked innocently. “I didn’t see nobody do nothin.’”  
  
“Nobovy dif nuffin,” Tempest repeated.  
  
Silque thumped the back of Mae’s head. “And you need to watch your grammar around him,” she scolded. “Or he’ll fall behind in school. Honestly, sometimes I can’t tell which if you is the parent and which of you is the child.”  
  
Tempest wriggled into his seat and took a big swig of milk, which dribbled down his chin and onto his smock. He opened his mouth to try and talk again. Silque sent a pointed look his way before he could try. He took a moment to swallow his food before talking.  
  
“I did school already,” he said. “Sissy teached me shapes and numbers and the nalphabet. Now I’m done at school.”  
  
“You think so?” Mae asked. “Did Sissy teach you how to count to two and a half?”  
  
Tempest frowned. “That’s not numbers,” he protested.  
  
“Is, too,” Mae replied. “How about how to spell ‘manakete?’”  
  
“Mama,” Tempest whined. “I can’t spell ‘cause I can’t read!”  
  
Mae shrugged. “I guess you’re not done with school, then,” she said. “You’re only done with school until you can spell manakete backwards, forwards, and upside-down.”  
  
“You can’t spell anything upside—“ Boey started to mumble, until Mae kicked him under the table.  
  
Tempest frowned, poking at his oatmeal with his spoon. “Don’t wanna do school,” he mumbled.  
  
“Well, kiddo,” Mae told him. “You wanna know one thing you don’t need any school to do?”  
  
Tempest looked up. Mae had her second fried egg on her fork. While he watched, she slurped the whole thing into her mouth like she had with the first one. Tempest cheered up immediately, clapping his hands and thumping his heels on the underside of the chair seat. Boey rolled his eyes and went back to the paper.  
  
With breakfast served, Silque had a little time to sit down and eat on her own. Her living quarters were just behind the kitchen, always warm from the heat of the stove. Yeast, who had parked himself in her doorway, meowed pointedly at her as she stepped over him to sit in her armchair, and hopped onto her lap when she sat down. Silque was a fairly small woman, and Yeast was a very large cat— a very large cat who thought himself both as big as a lion and as small as a kitten, switching between the two whenever it suited him.  
  
“You can’t keep doing this,” Silque said to him. Yeast, who could and would, sneezed.  
  
Despite Yeast’s interference, Silque managed to sit down for ten minutes, make herself a jam sandwich for breakfast, and then sit down for ten more minutes with the latest issue of _Modern Women_ before clattering dishes told her it was time to clean up from breakfast, put a kettle on for tea, and try to snag Tempest to give him a bath before he turned it into a game of hide-and-seek.  
  
Mae and Boey had already started. Boey knocked the crumbs from his plate into the garbage and started moving upstairs to get changed, while Mae had Tempest on her hip and was telling him some extravagant tale of what she planned to do with her day while waiting for the running water to heat up. Yeast chased Silque’s shoelaces into the kitchen and then started nosing around the trash can for stray bits of food. Silque didn’t really mind that, but she wished he wouldn’t make those displeasured mrrp noises while doing so, like he was grousing in Cat Language about how ill-fed he was that he was reduced to hunting for scraps around the trash can.  
  
“You know you pay me to do that _for_ you, don’t you,” Silque pointed out, pushing up her sleeves and picking up a dishrag.  
  
Mae grinned abashedly. “Old habits,” she said. “But I figure just ‘cause I’m not broke anymore doesn’t mean I get to waste my time twiddling my thumbs while you do all the work, you know? I was raised better than that.”  
  
Tempest tugged at her shirt. “Mama, Mama, what about after you saved the tiger,” he asked eagerly.  
  
Mae gasped, realizing she’d left out a very crucial part of the story, moving away from the sink so she wouldn’t get in the way. “You’re right! I’d almost forgotten! You see, they won’t tell you this in school, but you can get a tiger to do just about anything you say if you give them cherry pie— it’s their favorite treat, you know.”  
  
“I like cherry pie, too,” Tempest volunteered. “It’s my very very favorite.”  
  
“Well, how about that!” Mae remarked. “So there I was— I’d lost the pie, but I’d gained a tiger for a bodyguard…”  
  
Mid-sentence, someone rang the doorbell.

Her name was Anthiese Celica Rothschild-Markel, which was a formal and stately kind of name, but kind of a mouthful, so among her friends and family, she was Celica. Although conventions at the time would dictate that she would’ve changed her name to Markel on her marriage to Albein Markel, the name _Rothschild_ spoke enough for itself that it would’ve been foolish to just get rid of it. Mrs. Rothschild-Markel was the second-youngest of the Rothschilds, the ninth child of a father who’d never done any work to earn the Rothschild fortune in his life, though she’d fortunately never met him— he’d died in some way people hand-waved as “heart illness” when she was young, but everyone knew it’d been drug overdose. (The circumstances of said drug overdose remain the subject of speculation grown increasingly wild as the years have passed.)  
  
It’s very much worth mentioning what the Rothschilds do. One may notice that “Rothschild” sounded kind of similar to “Rothsburg,” the very city where this story took place. This was because the Rothschild family was older than the city itself, and had, in fact, founded it. Some claimed the Rothschild name could even be traced back to the royal family of Zofia, back when Zofia was a monarchy. The Rothschilds held no political power anymore, as Zofia had long since moved into a more democratic age, but one would be a fool to just ignore them. They were the very definition of old money, and they had kept their renown even as the economy shifted. In these modern times, the Rothschilds’ main association was with history— preservation of historical sites, documents, and artifacts, recovery and restoration of artifacts thought lost, and establishing accessibility of science, history, and art through curated museums, which could mostly be credited to Mrs. Rothschild-Markel's eldest brother. Perhaps in the past there’d been some kind of Rothschild-related scandal or drama, but that’d been before Mae’s time. Quite frankly, museums were out of the scope the general public tended to care about, so the Rothschild name was rarely mentioned in gossip.  
  
Mrs. Rothschild-Markel appeared on Mae’s front porch in a tailored, expensive maternity dress with a matching coat and hat, her red hair immaculate and her makeup flawless. She wasn’t significantly taller than Mae, but her limbs were long and she carried an energy that made her seem far taller than she actually was— an air of dignity, of authority. Even royalty, if one saw fit to be bold; certainly Mae would say so, in the sense that she felt like she ought to be kneeling with her hands on the pommel of a broadsword. It was very easy to picture Mrs. Rothschild-Markel seated upon a throne with a crown resting in the perfectly-coifed waves of her red hair— and upon seeing her, Mae suddenly understood why the rumor that the modern Rothschild family was descended from the kings and queens that ruled Zofia in the days of the monarchy had persisted into their modern age of automobiles and factories and jazz on the radio.  
  
She was no doubt there for a reason, and Mae could pretty safely guess what that reason was. Mae suddenly became aware of the breakfast crumbs on her lap, the dishwater on the waistband of her shirt, and the child on her hip.  
  
“I need to speak with Detective Valentine,” Mrs. Rothschild-Markel said, her voice exactly as put-together and businesslike as the rest of her. “Immediately, if you please.”  
  
“Oh,” was all Mae could say. She coughed. “That’s me, actually. I apologize for the…” she gestured vaguely to herself. Tempest shyly hid his face in Mae’s neck, peeking at Mrs. Rothschild-Markel with the hesitance typical of a child his age who has yet to see a safe-or-unsafe verdict from his mother.  
  
Mrs. Rothschild-Markel gave Mae a quick up-and-down glance. “Ah.”  
  
“Could you wait in the parlor?” Mae asked, gesturing to the archway into the parlor. “I’ll just be a minute. My partner and I will be back in shortly.”  
  
“Of course.” Mrs. Rothschild-Markel’s face returned to a perfect business poker face— her words and polite smile said I fully understand, but her straight posture and hands firmly clutching her handbag said please don’t keep me waiting.  
  
If she’d come this early in the morning, it must’ve been important, and in the five minutes it took Mae and Boey to be seated across from Mrs. Rothschild-Markel, Mae had formulated a pretty good guess as to why she was there and what to do about it.  
  
Mrs. Rothschild-Markel— _please, just Mrs. Rothschild is fine_ — did not keep her guessing. She sat primly with her hands folded atop her handbag (which, obviously, matched the rest of her ensemble). Silque had brought in a tray of tea, and she had taken a cup, but had yet to drink from it.  
  
“Six days ago,” Mrs. Rothschild began. “My husband went missing. I called the police as soon as I found that not only was he missing, but his office had been thoroughly disturbed and there was blood all over the floor. The police did a cursory investigation and took statements, but since then, nothing has been done, so I concluded that if my husband is to be found, I would need to involve outside help.”  
  
“You want me to find your missing husband,” Mae summed up. “Am I correct, Mrs. Rothschild?”  
  
Mrs. Rothschild nodded. She sucked in a breath, taking out a lacy handkerchief from her handbag and dabbing at the corners of her eyes. “Chief Steele recommended you personally, Detective Valentine,” she said. “I’ll pay any price. I just want him found.”  
  
“Well, I’d certainly be glad to help you, Mrs. Rothschild.” Mae looked to Boey, letting a corner of her mouth quirk upwards. “What say you, Mr. Dimitris? Are you ready for another case?”  
  
“Of course,” Boey agreed. “Detective Valentine and I will do the best we can to find your husband.”  
  
Mrs. Rothschild sighed in visible relief. “Oh, thank goodness. Of course, I’ll assist in any way I can.”  
  
“We appreciate the cooperation,” Mae said. She held out her hand for Mrs. Rothschild to shake. Mrs. Rothschild shook it.  
  
Mae stood up, briskly clapping her hands together. “I think the first step should be to let Chief Steele know that we’re taking this case,” she decided. “We’ll need the evidence record and those interview transcripts— as much information on last week’s crime as possible. Then we ought to visit the crime scene ourselves to see if the police missed anything.”  
  
“If you could meet us at the crime scene, Mrs. Rothschild,” Boey suggested, tucking his notepad into his jacket pocket. “It’ll be quicker to ask you about any additional evidence we find if we’re all in the same place.”  
  
Mrs. Rothschild swallowed thickly and nodded, tucking her handkerchief back into her handbag. “Of course, Detective,” she agreed. “I’ll have my driver take me there and wait for you.”  
  
She turned and left, leaving Mae and Boey in the parlor. When the door shut, Mae’s face broke into a grin. Quite unprofessionally (and quite cheerfully dismissive of this fact), she vaulted over the coffee table and darted to the coat rack, putting her overcoat over her shoulders and twirling her hat around one finger before flipping it onto her head in a picture-worthy arc.  
  
“Alright, Boey!” she announced cheerfully— far too cheerfully for someone tasked with investigating a kidnapping, one would think. “Let’s go find a businessman!”


	2. The Knife

The Rothsburg Police Department HQ looked like a fairly normal building, all things considered, but the fleet of black police cars parked on the streets out front and the big shield logo above the revolving doors kind of gave them away. It was all modern concrete and steel and glass, a far cry from the crumbling brick building that used to house the HQ until fairly recently. Inside still smelled like new drywall and fiberglass insulation, though the officers who worked there were working hard at covering it up with typewriter ink, shoe polish, and the universal police station constant of coffee and donuts.  
  
For the past six months, the Rothsburg Police have been swamped with the missing person cases, though the sense of urgency has faded to restless frustration with the lack of clues. There were no answers, only more questions— more crime scenes with no witnesses, and more victims with worried families. Mae acted cheery and focused on her own business, but Boey had known her since nursery school, and knew better than anyone that all these dead-end cases were getting to her something awful. The missing Mr. Markel was no different.  
  
Not that Mae let on that anything was wrong. She sauntered up to the Constable’s desk and leaned on it like she owned the place, giving Constable Chun a bright grin.  
  
“Mornin’, Lukas,” she said cheerfully. Constable Chun smiled politely. There were blue circles under his eyes and six empty coffee cups in the wastebin under his desk.  
  
“Good morning, Detective Valentine,” he replied. “Is there something I can help you with?”  
  
“I’m here about the Markel case,” Mae told him. “Is Clair in?”  
  
“Inspector Heartwood is currently in her office, going over witness statements from the latest disappearance last night,” Lukas said. “She gave me _explicit_ instructions not to let anyone bother her for anything short of an emergency.”  
  
Mae laughed. “Aw, Lukas! It’s adorable that you think that’ll stop me.”  
  
Lukas’s smile turned wry. “I’m just the messenger.”  
  
“She’ll be glad to see me,” Mae promised. “And it shouldn’t take long, either. C’mon, Boey.”  
  
Boey followed Mae back into the station, giving an apologetic shrug and a grin to Lukas. Lukas waved a hand, then turned back to typing up interview notes. “Let it be known that I tried,” he mumbled to himself. Really, that’s all one could ever do with Mae.  
  
Detective-Inspector Clair Heartwood was the kind of woman that had known she was going to be a detective since she was old enough to know what one was, and also the kind of woman that, when she said so, surprised absolutely no one. Captivated by the romance of a noble sleuth chasing justice for justice’s sake and later fascinated by true crime and the investigative process, Clair had wasted no time at all working to make her childhood dream a reality, and, by age twenty-six, had done just that and become one of the respected police detectives of the Rothsburg Police. Clair was determined, thorough, methodical, and everything that Mae wasn’t when it came to investigation (except for the requisite nose for justice). Naturally, when the two had met as students in the Police Academy, they’d immediately become best friends, and remained close even after Mae left the Rothsburg Police for the private sector.  
  
Mae swung open the door to Clair’s office and knocked on the open frame, flashing Clair a roguish grin. “Inspector.”  
  
Clair looked up from her stack of paperwork and gave Mae a weary smile. “If it isn’t Detective Valentine,” she remarked. “I _wondered_ when you’d show up to meddle in police affairs. And good morning, Mr. Dimitris.” She nodded to Boey. Boey tipped his hat in reply.  
  
Mae sauntered in, picking up the top folder from Clair’s stack and idly thumbing through. “Afraid we don’t have time to chat for long, Clair,” she said. “Boey and I have been hired to investigate Mr. Markel’s disappearance.”  
  
Clair’s smile faded to a sigh. “Ah, that one,” she remembered. “Yes, the press have been greatly entertained with that case. Never mind that we’ve seen another three disappearances since then…”  
  
“So you won’t mind us borrowing what you have from the Markel case,” Mae guessed. “What’ve you got, anyway? Interviews, evidence?”  
  
Clair rubbed the bridge of her nose and handed Mae a folder labeled Markel. “I have transcriptions of the interviews from Mr. Markel’s family and all who were present the night he disappeared, photos of the office, and the evidence record.”  
  
Mae thumbed through the Markel folder until she reached the evidence record. “You found a weapon this time? I’d think that’s at least _something_ to go on.”  
  
“Nobody recognized it.” Clair shook her head. “Constable Chun took a look at it and made some notes in the record, but I haven’t had the time between all these other cases to take a look. You might want to take a look at the knife and the lobby registry the apartment doorman gave us yourself— perhaps you’ll see something that I might’ve missed.”  
  
“Worth noting,” Mae agreed, handing the folder to Boey. “Thanks, Clair, I really appreciate it.”  
  
Clair sighed. “His poor mother,” she said. “His wife, too. She came in just the other day to check on our progress. It simply broke my heart to tell her we haven’t gotten any further. Though in that respect, it’s a good thing that she called you.”  
  
“She said that Chief Steele recommended Mae by name,” Boey mentioned.  
  
“Well, I can’t say I’m surprised,” Clair shrugged. “I really ought to return to work— Lukas will give you the evidence once you show him the file I gave you.”  
  
“I’ll do that,” Mae agreed. “And if I’ve got any questions, I’ll come to you.”  
  
“Yes, I’ll help how I can,” Clair nodded. “Good luck, Mae.”  
  
Mae tipped her hat to Clair as the two left, leaving Clair to her piles of paperwork. She shut the door behind her, cutting off noise from outside the office. Boey tucked the file into his case. Thus far, it seemed like just another disappearance— no witnesses, no obvious suspects, and only vague evidence. If all of these were the type of case that needed individual attention, it was no wonder they’d been piling up so high.  
  
Lukas gave them the knife and the lobby registry once Mae showed him the file. Mae handled them with gloves, just in case, turning the knife over in her hands. Lukas had told her it’d been cleaned— when it was found, it was bloody, like the rest of the crime scene, and they’d taken a sample of the blood to the lab. (Obviously, one couldn’t have bloody evidence just sitting around.) With that taken care of, Mae and Boey returned to the car. Mae drove, starting towards the address Mrs. Rothschild had given them.  
  
“Nice craftsmanship,” Boey commented, looking at the knife. It was short, sharp, and light, made of high-grade steel with a handle made of smooth wood with intricate pearl inlays made to look like tiny playing cards with an alternating pattern of the four suits. “You won’t find this at an arms store. Unfortunately, nobody Inspector Heartwood interviewed recognized it.”  
  
“Strange,” Mae mused. “It’s clearly a custom job, and not a cheap one, either. See a maker’s mark?”  
  
“Nothing that I can recognize.”  
  
Mae hummed at the traffic in front of her, clearly displeased. “Well, that kind of lead would make it too easy. Can’t have that.”  
  
“Someone could’ve pawned it,” Boey suggested. “We should ask around the local pawn shops.”  
  
“Mm,” Mae hummed uncertainly. “This doesn’t seem like something you’d pawn.”  
  
“It could’ve been stolen and then pawned,” Boey guessed. “In which case we can check police records, if the item was reported stolen.”  
  
“Not a bad start,” Mae admitted. “What do the interviews say? Any enemies?”  
  
Boey returned the knife to the evidence bag and picked up the pages of typewritten interview transcripts. “None. Everyone here says Mr. Markel was a good, honest man— no one can think of anyone who might hurt him, or even have a reason to. He wasn’t acting strangely, or keeping any secrets. But…”  
  
Mae quirked an eyebrow. “But?”  
  
“Apparently Mr. Markel didn’t always see eye-to-eye with his cousin, Berkut,” Boey read. “They ran the business together, but both had different ideas of how to do that. And the grandfather confesses that he witnessed them arguing on May 6th, the night before Mr. Markel went missing.”  
  
That was promising. “Could the cousin have done it?”  
  
“None of the other suspects think so, but it’s possible,” Boey shrugged. “But there’s something else. The grandfather, Rudolf Markel, suspects one of the Rothschilds.”  
  
“Mrs. Rothschild’s family?” Mae repeated.  
  
“Well, the elder Mr. Markel was a suspect in the death of Mrs. Rothschild’s father in ’96,” Boey said. “So he thinks one or more of the other suspects on the Rothschild side might be trying to get revenge for the fact that Rudolf was found innocent, and due to lack of substantial evidence, they ruled Lima Rothschild’s death an accident.”  
  
“Seems a little fishy to dig up a case twenty-five years closed,” Mae mused. “And you’d think they’d go after Rudolf himself in that case.”  
  
“Could be blackmail,” Boey suggested. “Either way, we should ask Mrs. Rothschild about it, and maybe track down the other suspects from the Lima case.”  
  
“Sounds like a plan,” Mae agreed. “We can ask Mrs. Rothschild after we’ve taken a look at the crime scene.”  
  
Mrs. Rothschild and her husband lived in a penthouse apartment on the ritzy side of town, exactly where young rich people lived once they hit their twenties and decided it was time to split off from their parents and make a name for themselves— the kind of neighborhood of expensive apartment buildings close to upscale bars, clubs, and lounges where said young people could use their paychecks earned by delegating the running of the business inherited from their parents to their secretaries to drink, gamble, party, and otherwise make mistakes they were expected to learn from by the time they hit thirty. In other words, Mae hadn’t expected anything different.  
  
Neither of the two doormen who were on duty during that night were present— probably sleeping, as overnight workers did during the day— but a registry was a registry, and their overseer had a copy that matched letter-for-letter the registry the police had been given, and both confirmed that nobody entered the building through the front between seven in the evening and four in the morning.  
  
Mrs. Rothschild was waiting for them upstairs, in the parlor of the apartment, talking quietly to the maid. It was a nice apartment, with expensive furniture and big windows showing off their view of the Rothsburg city skyline. Mrs. Rothschild stood up to greet them when they got there, a hand on her stomach, and offered a polite smile and a nod.  
  
“Detective Valentine, Mr. Dimitris,” she nodded to both of them in turn. “I expect you’ll want to see the… crime scene?”  
  
“Yes, I’d like to take a look around and see if I can find something the police might’ve overlooked,” Mae agreed. “Where is it?”  
  
“The office, through there and down the hall,” Mrs. Rothschild said. “Irma, could you take them?”  
  
The maid, Irma Reid, was in her fifties or so and had mousy brown hair streaked with silver at the temples. She bowed her head politely to Mae and Boey, and turned to lead them down the hallway to the office. They followed, leaving Mrs. Rothschild in the parlor.  
  
“So,” Mae began casually, as Mrs. Reid led them down a hallway paneled with expensive-looking wood. “How long have you worked for the Markels, Mrs. Reid?”  
  
“Oh, six years,” Mrs. Reid guessed. A step and a half behind Mae, Boey took out his notepad and started taking notes. “Since Mrs. Rothschild and Mr. Markel got married. They’re delightful young people. Couldn’t ask for better employers. A shame what happened to that dear boy, though.”  
  
“Well, that’s what we’re here to find out,” Mae promised. “Could you tell me about the sixth, the night Mr. Markel disappeared?”  
  
“I already told the police I left at seven and wasn’t back ’til five the next morning.” Mrs. Reid frowned. “I was at my sister’s house for my night off. That nice inspector girl said they’d confirm my alibi. Have they done that?”  
  
Have they? Mae glanced back at Boey, who nodded.  
  
“They have,” Mae said. “I just want to make sure. Could you tell me anything else?”  
  
Mrs. Reid tapped her chin. “Well, I made dinner at six. Mrs. Rothschild was feeling ill— being with child will do that to you— so she retired at about half-past-six. Mr. Markel stayed up to bid me goodbye at seven, so after I told him goodnight and I’d see him in the morning, I left. I did stop to chat a little with the evening doorman on my way out. He helped me with my umbrella— it was stuck, and it would’ve been just terrible to walk in that heavy rain without it. After that, I went to my sister’s house.”  
  
It all lined up thus far. “What about the morning of the seventh?”  
  
“I got back at five. I didn’t notice anything at all was wrong until I saw all the police cars out front,” Mrs. Reid said. “Poor Mrs. Rothschild was beside herself— she told me her husband had gone missing and she’d been up since four talking to the police about it. They asked to talk with me, too, and I told them what I’m telling you now, Detective Valentine.”  
  
Mrs. Reid stopped in front of a door at the end of the hall. She took a moment to breathe and re-center herself before opening it. Inside the office was a sharp contrast to the clean, organized elegance of the rest of the apartment— there was paperwork scattered on the floor, the expensive furniture was tipped over, knocked off-kilter, and full of deep gouges like claw marks, and there were dark brown stains soaked into the carpet— stains that Mae could only assume were dried blood.  
  
With practiced disconnect, Mae stepped over the threshold, crouching in front of the big bloodstain. She ran a gloved thumb over the gouges in the desk— they looked like claw marks made by some large animal, and there were more shredding the curtains and tearing into the upholstery of the overturned armchair. The torn curtains fluttered in the light breeze made by the open window, though there wasn’t much city noise as high up as they were.  
  
“Has anyone been in here but the police, ma’am?” Boey asked, his pencil hovering over his notebook page. “You or Mrs. Rothschild?”  
  
“No, not at all,” Mrs. Reid shook her head. “Well— no, I was in here after the police left, on the seventh, to open the windows. It smelled so horribly of wet dog— if I’d let it be, the entire apartment would’ve smelled that way. But I didn’t touch anything.”  
  
Boey wrote that down. “Wet dog?” he repeated. “Do the Markels have a dog?”  
  
“No, they don’t— just a cat, Brownie. Mr. Markel’s father has a dog, and occasionally brings him to visit, but he hasn’t done that in weeks.”  
  
“Well, I don’t know about cats or dogs, but,” Mae brought up, examining the window hinge. “Boey, come look at this.”  
  
Boey stepped over the bloodstains and joined Mae at the window. He took another little evidence bag out of his case and carefully pulled a tuft of coarse black fur out from where it was caught in the window hinge.  
  
“Well, how about that,” he remarked. “Could this be the cat’s, Mrs. Reid?”  
  
Mrs. Reid frowned at it. “No, Brownie is a brown tabby,” she said. “Come to think of it, I haven’t seen Brownie since I left on the sixth, and I’ve been here this whole week keeping watch of the place.”  
  
“Strange, strange,” Mae hummed. She pawed through the scattered papers and unearthed a page of newspaper, though there was no other newspaper nearby. It was the advertisements page, and one ad was circled in black ink— something for painting classes at a local community center.  
  
“You’d think that that much blood would leave a trail,” Boey thought aloud, while Mae kept shuffling through the scattered papers. “But this is the only place in the entire apartment where they found any blood— not to mention there’s nothing else amiss at all, at least that the record shows, outside the wet floor the day he disappeared. This much blood and a knife at the scene should point to a murder, but obviously there’s no body…”  
  
Mae poked her head up from behind the desk. “So you ain’t got no-body, huh?”  
  
Boey rolled his eyes. “Mae.”  
  
“There, there,” Mae continued. “Don’t cry about it.” And then she produced a green linen handkerchief with a lily embroidered into the corner— another clue.  
  
Boey sighed. “Mae, what have I told you about theatrics with the evidence?” Then he frowned. “What’s that, anyway?”  
  
“Found it under the desk.” Mae wriggled out from behind it, handing the handkerchief over to Boey so he could take a look. “Lovely stitching. And this ad here is for painting classes— since it was circled, it could be a clue.”  
  
“Let’s run all this by Mrs. Rothschild,” Boey suggested. “She’ll at least be a starting point.”  
  
Mrs. Rothschild recognized the handkerchief immediately, which either meant its owner was their culprit or someone wanted them to think it was.  
  
“That’s Berkut’s,” she said. “The lily on it— his wife embroidered that. I’ve never seen him without one like it on him. And I’d recognize that embroidery as Rinea’s any day.”  
  
Boey wrote that down while Mae leaned back on the couch and hummed. “Convenient that it found its way to your husband’s office,” she remarked. “Any thoughts on that, Mrs. Rothschild?”  
  
Mrs. Rothschild considered this. “Well, I was asleep all evening,” she said. “For all I know, Berkut could’ve paid a visit. They did argue that day— perhaps he was coming to apologize.”  
  
“Or to take care of his cousin once and for all,” Boey mumbled.  
  
Mrs. Rothschild pursed her lips. “I wouldn’t go that far,” she said.  
  
“It could very well be coincidence,” Mae admitted. “What about the newspaper ad?”  
  
Mrs. Rothschild hummed. “Alm liked to paint,” she said. “Painting, drawing— it was his favorite hobby. He was good, too. That piece over the mantle is one of his.” Mrs. Rothschild nodded to the mantlepiece to an oil painting of a redheaded woman in a white dress and a big hat standing ankles-deep in a serene pond. Mrs. Rothschild was right— it was good. In the bottom-left corner, Mr. Markel had signed it _AAM - 1917._  
  
“If Mr. Markel was so talented, why circle a painting class?” Boey wondered.  
  
“Well, he stopped his formal training when he started university,” Mrs. Rothschild explained. “Maybe he wanted to brush up on his fundamentals.”  
  
“Why did he stop?” Mae asked.  
  
Mrs. Rothschild hesitated. “His grandfather wanted him to focus on business,” she said. “It was one of the few things they seriously disagreed about.”  
  
Mae and Boey exchanged glances. Boey wrote that down in his notepad and underlined it.  
  
“Speaking of Rudolf Markel,” Mae brought up. “His interview with the police mentioned being involved in a prior case involving the death of your father, Mrs. Rothschild, and he wonders if another one of your relatives that was involved then might be involved now.”  
  
Mrs. Rothschild blinked in surprise. “He thinks that?” she repeated. “Well— well, I— I can’t imagine why. That case has been closed for nearly as long as I’ve been alive. I’d think it’d be long forgotten.”  
  
“What can you tell me about the case of your father’s death?” Mae asked. “Just what you know.”  
  
“Well, I was so young, I don’t remember it at all.” Mrs. Rothschild shrugged. “I know my nursemaids were both suspects. So were my two eldest siblings, and a man who used to work for my father. But nobody ever talked about it with me. What could that possibly have to do with Alm going missing?”  
  
“It may be possible that, if the elder Mr. Markel’s hunch proves true,” Boey admitted. “Then one of those people could have been the one to kidnap your husband.”  
  
“But we don’t know for sure,” Mae added. “So turning to more recent times, what can you tell us about your family?”  
  
Mrs. Rothschild looked suspicious, but told them anyway. “My mother died giving birth to me. My father, as the entire world knows, died in 1896 of a cocaine overdose. I was essentially raised by my nursemaids, Mrs. Butcher and Sister Viktoriya, and my siblings— I have four older sisters, four older brothers, and one younger sister.”  
  
“According to our other statements, your elder siblings are all very protective of you,” Mae recalled.  
  
“Well, I’m one of the youngest,” Mrs. Rothschild shrugged. “My sister Octavia and my brother Arcturus— they’re the two eldest— have always been protective of all of us. But they understand I’m a grown woman and can make my own decisions.”  
  
“What did they think of your marrying Mr. Markel?” Mae asked. “Do you know?”  
  
“Well, if they disliked him for any reason, they certainly didn’t say anything to _me_ ,” Mrs. Rothschild said curtly. “Detective, I hired you to find my husband, not to accuse my family of kidnapping. If I were you, I’d look at Berkut— if he didn’t do it, he was at least here the day Alm disappeared.”  
  
Well, they clearly wouldn’t get any more out of her. Mae changed tactics. “We’ll be sure to find and interview Berkut,” she promised. “I’m told you have a cat?”  
  
At the change in topic, Mrs. Rothschild’s attitude went back to professional neutrality. “Yes, we do. Irma tells me she hasn’t seen Brownie since the day Alm disappeared. I suppose she was scared off with the confusion of whatever happened that night, though it’s odd she hasn’t returned yet.”  
  
“Maybe we could find her,” Mae suggested.  
  
Mrs. Rothschild blinked in surprise. “Oh, well, I couldn’t tell you where she went— cats, you know. But it would put my mind at ease to know Brownie’s safe. Alm raised her from a kitten, you know, and she’s really an indoor cat. I don’t like her chances out in the city.”  
  
“So, it’s settled,” Mae decided. “Boey, why don’t you take that fur we found to the lab, and I’ll go find Mrs. Rothschild’s cat. Mrs. Rothschild, are you staying here while the investigation’s going on?”  
  
Mrs. Rothschild shook her head. “No, no, I can’t stand it here. It’s so empty, with Alm gone. I’ve been staying with my brother Conrad, in the suburbs.”  
  
“That’s quite a drive,” Mae commented. “If you feel comfortable, I’m more than happy to let you stay in my house— it’s much closer, and I’ll more easily be able to find you to give you updates on the case.”  
  
“Oh, truly?” Mrs. Rothschild said. “Thank you, Detective Valentine, that’s so generous. I believe I’ll take you up on that offer and have Saber take me there.”  
  
“Then Boey and I will see you there later today,” Mae said. “Thank you, Mrs. Rothschild.”  
  
They parted ways with Mrs. Rothschild there, and in the building elevator on the way down, Boey broke the silence.  
  
“What in Mila’s name does the _cat_ have to do with this?” he asked.  
  
Mae gave him a grin. “Elementary, my dear Dimitris,” she said. “If the cat got scared off by the commotion that happened when Mr. Markel got kidnapped, then she might recognize what spooked her in the first place.”  
  
Boey didn’t seem convinced. “And how are you going to get that information out of a _cat?”_  
  
“We can cross that bridge when we get to it.” She patted Boey’s shoulder. “Go on without me— I’ll walk home. I’ve got a cat to find.”  
  
Mrs. Rothschild’s cat, Mae figured, probably wasn’t too different from any other cat. What made her so confident was that if Brownie was a pampered indoor cat that Mr. Markel had raised from a kitten, she wouldn’t be used to scrounging for meals in alleyways, and would look for somewhere food was easy to get at— somewhere where people threw out scraps of fresh meat they couldn’t use, like a butcher’s shop. Thus, Mae was not surprised when she caught sight of a cat sprinting through the alley between two buildings barely a minute’s walk from the apartment— one of which happened to be a deli. Now, it definitely wasn’t a _typical_ sight to see a grown woman in a tailored suit vaulting over a garbage can in pursuit of a stray cat, but never let it be said that Mae was in any way typical.  
  
The cat had stopped behind the deli, its back to the wrought iron fence separating the two rows of back-to-back buildings, and it hissed— but it wasn’t hissing at Mae.  
  
There was a shape outlined in the light falling on the brick. Mae couldn’t tell details from its silhouette, but she could tell that it was big, it was living, and as Mae stepped closer, she could see the telltale fuzzy outline of a creature covered in bristling fur.  
  
Mae’s foot landed against a discarded can, sending it clattering across the brickwork. The shape vanished and the cat jumped, puffing up at Mae in an attempt to make itself look bigger. The cat was a brown tabby, and it had a pink ribbon tied around its neck— Mae could only guess that this was Brownie.  
  
It was a good thing she’d come prepared. Mae crouched, took off one of her gloves, and pulled a piece of sausage pilfered from Mrs. Rothschild’s icebox out of her jacket pocket. She placed it carefully on the bricks, then made a show of examining her nail beds as Brownie, her fur still puffed, crept closer to investigate the sausage.  
  
Finding the sausage a worthy sacrifice, Brownie mrrped in satisfaction, rubbing against Mae’s shin. She sniffed at Mae’s hand when Mae lowered it, and squeaked until Mae started petting her.  
  
“Well, you’re a friendly girl, huh?” Mae cooed, scratching Brownie’s ears. “That makes my job a whole lot easier.”  
  
Brownie squeaked. Mae hoped that meant she agreed.  
  
Mae scooped the cat into her arms and prepared to start the trek home. The distance, while doable, was the most difficult part of her detour to find Mrs. Rothschild’s cat. But before she did, something caught her eye— another tuft of coarse black fur. It couldn’t be a coincidence— not in Mae’s line of work. She tucked it in her pocket to show Boey when they all met back at the house.  
  
Silque opened the door when Mae knocked on it. She glanced from Mae to the cat in her arms and raised an eyebrow.  
  
“You brought us another cat,” she observed.  
  
“It’s for the case,” Mae promised. “She’s Mrs. Rothschild’s.”  
  
Silque hummed skeptically, as Silque often found herself doing when Mae brought home strange things for the sake of her case— off the top of her head, Silque could name times she’d returned with a set of antique walking sticks (all of which contained hidden swords), a folding harpsichord, a book of Archanean postcards, a live box turtle, a set of skis, a bicycle wheel, and a copy of How to Make Him Fall for You in a Fortnight. In perspective, a cat was not all that surprising.  
  
Silque sighed. “Mrs. Rothschild is in the sitting room,” she said.  
  
Mae grinned endearingly. “Blessings upon you, Sister~!”  
  
Silque shook her head. Some things never changed.  
  
Mrs. Rothschild was thumbing through pages of a novel when she noticed Mae enter the room. Her face lit up in delight when she saw the cat. “You found Brownie!”  
  
Brownie jumped out of Mae’s arms and darted onto Mrs. Rothschild’s lap, purring happily. Mrs. Rothschild, her novel forgotten, rubbed Brownie’s ears in an attempt to make up for a week of missed affection.  
  
Mae leaned against the mantlepiece. “She was pretty close to home,” she said. “It wasn’t that hard. I’ve rescued cats before, back home— bribe them with a treat and let them figure you out a little, and it’s pretty easy from there.”  
  
“Still, thank you, Detective Valentine,” Mrs. Rothschild said, though she was still focused on her cat. “I was so worried— Alm _and_ Brownie, both missing? I’m relieved that at least one of them is alright.”  
  
Mae hummed. “You call him Alm?” she asked casually.  
  
Mrs. Rothschild put a bookmark in her novel and set it on the tea table, which held a steaming teacup that it seemed Mrs. Rothschild had yet to touch. “Yes, it’s his middle name. It suits him better than Albein, I think, and most people who know him agree.”  
  
Mae had never met the guy, but she nodded anyway. “He seems like a real stand-up kind of fella, from what I’ve heard.” Then, seeing Mrs. Rothschild’s momentary look of confusion, corrected herself. “A good guy. An honest man.”  
  
“Oh! Oh.” Mrs. Rothschild coughed. “Yes, he is. We met at university,” she said, picking up her teacup by the saucer and idly running her thumb along the rim. She chuckled wistfully. “He would always draw little cartoons in the margins of his textbooks, and all over his notes. But he was good at the figures— business needs a lot of figures. When he took his portraiture class our second year, he would always ask me to model for his sketches. Sometimes he’d sketch me when I wasn’t looking.”  
  
Mrs. Rothschild swallowed, taking the tiny spoon and stirring her tea. “I know it’s been days now, but I still find it so hard to believe that he’s missing. We were planning the baby shower,” she said weakly. “It was going to be perfect.”  
  
“I can only imagine,” Mae said. “It’s hard to believe someone might hurt him.”  
  
Mrs. Rothschild nodded empathetically. “I just can’t fathom it,” she insisted. “And you know, we disagreed sometimes, but we always worked it out. He’s never once done wrong by me. Though I suppose my sister threatening him at our wedding with grievous bodily harm should that ever be the case doesn’t hurt.” She chuckled halfheartedly, letting the spoon rest against the side of the teacup.  
  
Mae hummed, an elbow on the mantlepiece, her hand idly fiddling with the frame of an old photograph. “Your sister threatened him?”  
  
Mrs. Rothschild tried to backpedal. “Well, Tavi’s always been protective, you know how siblings are,” she said. “But she wouldn’t really do anything. My sister would _never_ hurt someone if they didn’t deserve it,” she finished, very firmly.  
  
It seemed Mae would have to tread carefully asking questions about the other Rothschilds if she wanted Mrs. Rothschild to give an honest answer. Alright, fine. She’s dealt with protective families before.  
  
“Of course,” she agreed. “You know, I have to admit I’m somewhat curious about your siblings, Mrs. Rothschild. They must be an interesting bunch, if your brother is anything to go by— Dr. Arcturus, the one that runs the museums.”  
  
Mrs. Rothschild nodded. “My brother is quite accomplished. I admit I didn’t know him very well when I was young, but he was getting his degrees and running the Rothschild estate, so he didn’t have much time, but he did what he could. The estate now, curating the museums— it’s all his work.”  
  
“You sound like you admire him quite a bit,” Mae remarked.  
  
“Of course I do,” Mrs. Rothschild agreed. “He’s my brother.”  
  
Mrs. Rothschild gave her tea another idle stir. The sitting room was quiet save for Brownie purring. In the kitchen, sounds floated through the hall of Silque teaching Mr. Butcher, Mrs. Rothschild’s driver, how to deglaze a skillet. Yeast wandered in, mrrped at Mae, and plopped himself down in Silque’s rocking chair by the empty fireplace.  
  
“Inspector Heartwood told me they found a knife in Alm’s office,” Mrs. Rothschild said. “Do you have any idea what it means?”  
  
Mae shook her head. “It could mean any number of things. There was blood on the knife and blood on the floor, but we don’t know whose blood it is, so it could mean that Alm injured his kidnapper in the fight, or the kidnapper could’ve injured Alm. But you know it wasn’t an ordinary knife.” She glanced back at Mrs. Rothschild, who looked the picture of perfect neutrality, but even she couldn’t hide how pale her knuckles were getting around the handle of her teacup.  
  
“This knife was clearly a custom job,” Mae said. “Sharp. Light. Well-made. Clean and well-kept, before it found itself an assault weapon, anyway. And it had this lovely inlay of card suits all around the handle— that kind of commission wouldn’t come cheap.”  
  
“I _suppose_ it wouldn’t,” Mrs. Rothschild agreed carefully. “Detective, I already told the police that I don’t recognize it.”  
  
“And I believe you,” Mae promised. “I’m just spitballin’— speculating, if you will. Mr. Fisher’s going to check the stolen goods reports at the police station while he’s there, and if that fails, then we’ll probably check the local pawn shops. ’Til then, all we can do is wonder.”  
  
Mrs. Rothschild had gone very quiet, her face expressionless. Mae would admit that it was a good poker face, but someone who was telling the truth wouldn’t have needed to put one up.  
  
“I think its owner might be…” Mae shrugged casually, not looking at Mrs. Rothschild and instead fiddling with the frame of an old photo placed on the mantlepiece, an old one from back on Novis dated 1905. “Some sort of card game enthusiast— poker, maybe, or canasta, or gin rummy. Maybe speed. Maybe blackjack.”  
  
She glanced at Mrs. Rothschild once again. Mrs. Rothschild had not moved.  
  
“Ah, who knows?” Mae snorted. “Maybe I’m just reading too much into things, and the knife just belongs to an artisan who made it for practice. But it doesn’t hurt to chuck that spaghetti at the wall and see if it sticks. Eh, Mrs. Rothschild?”  
  
Mrs. Rothschild smiled tightly, and the expression didn’t reach her eyes. “Quite so, Detective.”  
  
Mae probably wasn’t going to get anything else out of her. She stopped messing with the photo frame and left it alone, but slightly askew as it had been before, and sat down in the exact middle of the loveseat across from the couch, resting her elbows on the back and crossing her legs with one ankle on its opposite knee, which was about the least ladylike way anyone could ever sit and still be socially acceptable— just how Mae liked it.  
  
She jabbed her chin at the tea tray. “Not your favorite kind of tea?”  
  
Mrs. Rothschild, relieved at the change in topic, smiled and shook her head. “I’m really not a tea person at all,” she admitted. “I prefer coffee. Or brandy, I think it’s obvious why that’s not an option.”  
  
“Ah, of course,” Mae nodded. “I remember that well.”  
  
“From before your son was born?” Mrs. Rothschild guessed. “So you…”  
  
“No, I didn’t carry him,” Mae filled in. “But I quit drinking while his mother was pregnant. She’d always look at my scotch with such sad eyes, I couldn’t do it.” Mae snorted. “You never realize how often you need a stiff drink until you can’t ask for them anymore.”  
  
Mrs. Rothschild sighed. “It’s terrible,” she said. “I don’t like tea. No one makes coffee after eleven in the morning. I suppose I just have to suffer.”  
  
Mae clicked her tongue. “Not so, Mrs. Rothschild,” she said. “If you’ll excuse me for a second, I’ll be back in a jiffy. If I may be so bold, I’ve got something that’ll knock your socks off.”  
  
Mae left Mrs. Rothschild in the sitting room and swung into the kitchen, brushing past Silque and Mr. Butcher to pop open the icebox and retrieve two bottles of ginger ale— the cheap kind that Silque always bought for literally a dime a dozen.  
  
On her way back with the sodas, she paused, looking at Mr. Butcher, who stopped midway through deboning a chicken wing and raised an eyebrow. Mr. Butcher was tall, broad, and grizzled, with tanned, hairy forearms and a bristly chinstrap beard, bright red hair, and one eye covered in a faded patch. Below his rolled-up shirtsleeves, his forearms were covered in dark blue tattoos, most of which Mae recognized as sailor’s tattoos— you pick that kind of thing up, growing up in a port.  
  
“Say, mac, I don’t think we’ve met,” Mae said, nodding to Mr. Butcher. “You work for Mrs. Rothschild, yeah?”  
  
Mr. Butcher grunted. “Aye. I drive the lass where she needs tae go.”  
  
Mae grinned amicably. “Just wanted to make sure,” she said. “Detective Valentine. You a Nav man?”  
  
“Call me Saber,” Mr. Butcher said. “Aye, I did my apprenticeship on a shipping charter as a lad, ’til ma went to work for the lass’s old man. Once he died, I joined the Nav. Served ’til I lost this eye in ’14. The lass hired me back in.”  
  
“That’s a pretty long time,” Mae commented. “You like working for them?”  
  
Saber nodded. “Ma tells me she likes workin’ for em, ever since the eldest two took over. Work’s honest, pay’s good— and the barrel of ‘em are pretty alright for rich folk, I’d say.”  
  
Mae hummed. “They seem pretty on the level,” she said. “How ‘bout Mrs. Rothschild’s beau? You met him?”  
  
Saber shrugged. “Known Celica since she was a wee lil’ thing,” he said. “So I met the lad once or twice, aye. Can’t say much past that. Lil’ miss likes him, and she sure don’t need some old coot givin’ out his thoughts about who she wants to court.”  
  
“Well, I suppose that’s fair,” Mae admitted. “You know all the Rothschilds that well?”  
  
“Well enough to call ‘em mates, I s’pose,” Saber shrugged.  
  
“Any of ‘em have a thing for card games?” Mae asked.  
  
Saber paused, considering this. He did look like he was going to say something, but instead, he clears his throat. “I oughta get back to cookin’, Detective,” he says. “Don’t know nothin’ about knives or shit.”  
  
Suspicious, but Mae leaves it alone. “Alright, sure,” she shrugged. “Don’t let the good Sister bully you too much, eh?”  
  
Silque cracked a grin. “How else will he learn?”  
  
Mae cackled, affectionately patting Saber’s arm before picking her ginger ale bottles back up and waltzing back into the sitting room with her treasure.

“Behold,” she said, brandishing a bottle of ginger ale with a flourish. “The life’s blood of broke preteens the world over. Sweet, cool, refreshing, lightly carbonated— really, there’s nothing better.”  
  
Mrs. Rothschild blinked, taking one of the bottles. “‘Mr. Miracle’s Ginger Fizz,” she read. “What is this, exactly?”  
  
“Ginger ale,” Mae explained, pulling a bottle opener from her pocket and popping the top of hers with a satisfying crack and fizz. “Drank it all the time as a kid. And when Tempest’s mother was pregnant, I drank it in lieu of something like scotch or brandy.” She popped open the top of Mrs. Rothschild’s and handed it back.  
  
She held out her bottle and clinked it to Mrs. Rothschild’s. “Bottoms up!”  
  
Mae took a swig. Mrs. Rothschild weighed her options, then shrugged and imitated Mae. She made a series of very interesting faces, trying to process this new sensation, and then finally managed a “… Goodness.”  
  
“Good, right?” Mae prompted.  
  
“It’s… something,” Mrs. Rothschild admitted. “It’s… interesting.”  
  
“Your first soda’s always like that,” Mae nodded. “You get used to it.”  
  
Mrs. Rothschild hummed. “I suppose one does,” she said. She looked at her soda, then back at Mae. “I haven’t seen your wife around,” she brought up. “Or is Mr. Dimitris…”  
  
Mae snorted. “He and I are just friends, believe you me,” she said. “No, I’m not married. Legally, Tempest’s mother and I are divorced, but given that we were married for less than a year and only so her family wouldn’t kill me and disown her once they found out we’d conceived out of wedlock, it barely counts.”  
  
“Ah,” Mrs. Rothschild nodded. “I’m sorry to hear that.”  
  
Mae waved a hand. “It was several years ago at this point, and she and I are still friends. She wasn’t ready to raise a child and a romance wouldn’t have lasted long anyway, once the novelty wore off. I’m no longer welcome at their family dinners, but so it goes. Though I do miss the food,” she admitted. “Their cook made a damn fine cranberry sauce.”  
  
Mrs. Rothschild thumbed the rim of her ginger ale bottle. “I’d think the housekeeper you have would do the child-rearing,” she said.  
  
Mae hesitated. “I don’t much like that idea,” she replied. “And she knew that, and that’s probably part of why we broke it off when we did. I can’t abide by… _not_ raising my kid, you know?”  
  
Mrs. Rothschild shrugged. “That’s how my family did it,” she said.  
  
“Well, not mine,” Mae replied. “Pop ran a machine repair place and Dad drew magazine covers for a living. We didn’t exactly have the money to spare to hire a nanny, so.” She shrugged. “Maybe it’s just a holdover from growing up broke. Who knows.”  
  
“Maybe,” Mrs. Rothschild hummed. She went quiet, though Mae could only imagine what she was thinking about— thoughts about family, about parenthood. Of course it wasn’t Mae’s business, but she was observant, and Mrs. Rothschild wasn’t as stoic as she thought she was.

The front door opened and shut, breaking the lull of quiet that’d settled. “I can’t believe you cracked open the sodas without me,” Boey complained, shutting the front door behind him. “Mae Valentine, you are a _menace_.”  
  
“There’s more in the icebox, grab one,” Mae called back. “It’s _your_ house, too. You don’t need me to get you your drinks.”  
  
Boey grumbled indistinctly, but notably did not get himself a ginger ale, instead nodding politely to Mrs. Rothschild and hanging his hat and overcoat on the rack. He sat down on one of the other armchairs. Yeast hopped into his lap, demanding attention, and Boey, powerless before the might of a fat house cat, started petting him.  
  
“I don’t suppose the cat told us who kidnapped Mr. Markel?” he asked.  
  
Mae snorted. “If only. Nah, we’re gonna have to do things the hard way. We’ll interview the Rothschilds tomorrow, right?”  
  
Boey flipped through a ledger. “Tomorrow at eleven, is when Dr. Rothschild said he’d be free to talk,” he said. “I haven’t been able to get through to any Markels to schedule an interview, though.”  
  
“They must all be busy preparing for the business party,” Mrs. Rothschild guessed. “I can’t _believe_ they’re going ahead with it!”  
  
Mae arched an eyebrow. “A party?”  
  
“Every month, following the successful completion of next month’s catalogue issue, Rudolf Markel hosts an executive party at his estate out in Pine Crest,” Mrs. Rothschild sighed. “I suppose it’s planned too far in advance to just cancel last-minute, but still.”  
  
Boey scratched his head. “So anything we set up will have to be after the party.”  
  
“Or,” Mae said slowly. “Mrs. Rothschild, you were invited, right?”  
  
Mrs. Rothschild seemed to realize what she meant. “Well, my invitation _does_ say I can bring a plus one,” she brought up. “But it has my name on it— they won’t let you in if I’m not there, and there are two of you.”  
  
“Boey can find another way in,” Mae waved a hand. “Like that time in Callensbridge. You remember, Boey, with the beer barrels and the goat?”  
  
Boey rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I’d been trying to block it out.”  
  
“So when’s the party?” Mae asked.  
  
“It’s the day after tomorrow, on the fourteenth,” Mrs. Rothschild said. “May I ask about the…”  
  
“I’d really rather you didn’t,” Boey said. “Anyway. I went by the police station to compare notes with Clair,” he said, segueing into different business. “Haven’t found much. The knife hasn’t been reported as stolen goods, so we’re better off checking the pawn shops. I did write down some data from the other missing person cases.”  
  
“What’ve you got?” Mae prompted.  
  
Boey put on a set of wire-framed reading glasses and took out his notepad. “Well, they started on the nineteenth of November,” he said. “And in that week, there were four of these cases. The next month, in the week of the seventeenth of December, there were ten. A month later, in January, there were eighteen. February had twenty, March had twenty-nine, and April had thirty-five. Between these weeks, January only saw up to three, but this number’s also increased. Last week saw fifteen disappearances from the city.”  
  
“So they’re increasing in frequency,” Mae hummed. “That’s not good.”  
  
“To say the least,” Mrs. Rothschild concurred.  
  
“And there will be more if they don’t find the culprit soon,” Boey said grimly. “But here’s the thing— they’re all from greater Rothsburg, and only the urban area, at that. So nobody’s gone missing from the suburbs or the surrounding towns.”  
  
“Strange,” Mrs. Rothschild remarked. “Do you have any idea why?”  
  
“None yet,” Boey admitted. “But it can’t just be coincidence. They _have_ to be connected somehow. Except they aren’t— there’s no pattern, at least not that i can see. The victims are from all different neighborhoods in urban Rothsburg, they have all different jobs, backgrounds, family lives— if it weren’t for the quantity in such a short amount of time, the police would just assume they’re random.”  
  
“Boey,” Mae said, the gears in her head turning. “Can you plot out for me on a map the locations where all these folks went missing?”  
  
“Sure, give me a day or two,” Boey nodded. “Got a hunch?”  
  
“Yeah,” Mae nodded. “Yeah, I’ve got a hunch. I just don’t know where it’ll get us.”  
  
“Oh, one more thing you’ll want to know,” Boey added.  “The police station has analyzed the blood found on both the floor and the knife, and found that it’s not Mr. Markel’s.”  
  
Mae frowned, leaning forward and resting her chin on her hand. “Is it the assailant’s?”  
  
Boey shook his head. “It’s not even human blood,” he said. “It’s— well, it’s not city animal blood, we can say that. It seems to be wolf blood, but they can’t tell what kind of wolf.”  
  
“How would a wolf get into our apartment?” Mrs. Rothschild asked.  
  
“How would a wolf get through uptown Rothsburg without animal control knowing?” Boey asked in reply. “That’s part of the mystery. But if it was a wolf, that’d explain the wet dog smell.”  
  
Something clicked in Mae’s mind.  
  
“So, here's a thought,” she said. “But I don’t think either of you are going to believe it.”


	3. The Inspector and the Chief

The Rothsburg Chief of Police was a woman in her early forties named Mathilda Steele. She was well-known for being tough but fair, and while she wasn’t born into much wealth herself, for a brief time she’d courted a rich man. It ultimately hadn’t worked out, but she’d stayed friends with the family, including her ex-lover’s younger sister, who happened to be Detective Inspector Clair Heartwood. This meant that Mathilda Steele was not only Mae’s ex-boss, but for a brief period of time, her sister-in-law.  
  
Oh, right. Didn’t we mention that Mae’s ex-wife was Clair?  
  
Mae and Boey stopped by the police station once again on the thirteenth, having rested, bounced ideas, and come up with nothing particularly new— except for Mae’s hunch that werewolves were involved. Boey, by now, was well aware that Mae’s hunches were usually right, but this was far-fetched, even for her. After all, werewolves didn’t live in cities. Even if they did, what reason would they have to kidnap a businessman? Maybe that was what Mae’s gut was telling her, but it just didn’t make any sense.  
  
Still, it was a better idea than anyone else had.  
  
Mae and Boey were seated in Clair’s office to compare notes. They weren’t staying long, but their appointment with Dr. Rothschild wasn’t until noon, so they had a little time to kill. Clair was also present, as it was her office, along with Chief Steele herself and a woman named Sonya Dara, whom Mae had met that very day, who was theoretically a police consultant. That was how Chief Steele had introduced her, but Ms. Dara was definitely not the kind of woman that seemed like she ought to work with the police. Mae couldn’t quite get a read on Ms. Dara, and that in and of itself added Ms. Dara to the list of puzzles Mae would find herself ruminating upon.  
  
Clair paced her office, as she often did. She had the sleeves of her shirt rolled up slightly less crisply than usual, and half had come untucked from the frequency of her pacing. Her shirt was pale blue, an appealing but not particularly daring color to pair with her gray slacks, waistcoat, and jacket, but she’d picked up a little something from Mae and mixed it up with a dark red tie. The knot was loosened around her neck, but it still remained tucked into the waistcoat, pulling together the look of a woman spread too thin on too little caffeine.   
  
“It’s just a hunch,” Mae said. “We’re going to keep investigating more logical avenues. But that’s what my gut’s telling me, and you know how accurate my gut is, Clair.”   
  
“I won’t deny it,” Clair admitted. “And it’s not as if we’re teeming with logical conclusions.”   
  
Ms. Dara hummed. She had her long legs crossed at the ankle as she lounged (not sat, lounged) in one of the spare chairs in Clair’s office, a lit cigarette in an ebony holder perched between two of her fingers. She wore a long, fitted dress with a plunging neckline, knife-sharp heels that added another four inches to her already-impressive height, opera gloves, and Mae had seen a matching velvet cloak trimmed in a thick layer of feathers with a velvet cloche to match hanging in the cloakroom— it didn’t take a detective to figure out who they belonged to once she’d seen Ms. Dara. Her whole ensemble was pitch black, but the various fabrics shimmered with warm hints of red, orange, and gold when the light hit them right. She looked like she could’ve played any of the femme fatale characters in a detective drama story, and the main character would describe her as being dangerous and seductive and having curves in all the right places. But if you asked Mae, Ms. Sonya Dara’s energy wasn’t quite femme fatale, but something different— something like the elegant, regal authority that Mrs. Rothschild radiated, but with more knives.  
  
“I think it has weight,” said Ms. Dara. “Werewolves have lived in cities before. There’s no reason to think they wouldn’t now. And it would explain the wet dog stench, the wolf’s blood, and the fur.”   
  
“Exactly, and,” Mae added. “A werewolf shifted into human form wouldn’t have any issues roaming Rothsburg. A full-on _wolf_ would raise a few eyebrows, to say the least.”   
  
Chief Steele nodded. “It has merit,” she said slowly. “Detective Valentine, you know I trust your hunches. If that’s what your gut says, then I say follow it.”   
  
Mae smiled wryly. “You put a lot of faith in me, Chief,” she said.   
  
“You’ve never let Rothsburg down before,” Chief Steele replied. “That’s why I referred Mrs. Rothschild to you. If the job’s going to get done, you’re the woman to do it.”   
  
She patted Mae’s shoulder on her way out of Clair’s office. “Good luck with the Rothschild interview today,” she said. “And if you need guidance when it comes to the more… supernatural aspect of your investigation, just ask Ms. Dara.” Ms. Dara nodded politely to Mae.   
  
“Thanks, Chief,” Mae said. Chief Steele left. Clair sat down at her desk and took a long swig from her coffee mug.   
  
“If all these disappearances _are_ werewolves, then we’ve got an epidemic on our hands,” Clair sighed. “And that means that every werewolf in Rothsburg is under suspicion. That’s going to be a lot of interviews. I don’t even know if the registry is current.”   
  
“Hopefully it won’t come to investigating _every_ _werewolf_ in the city,” Mae replied. “Maybe the Markel case is something different. We’re still going to pursue just interviewing the Rothschilds and the Markels to see if we can uncover some kind of motive on either side.”   
  
“Nobody’s been eager to part with information that might incriminate their side,” Boey added. “In fact, every time we bring up the knife to a Rothschild, they clam up— Mrs. Rothschild included.”   
  
“So it’s definitely one of theirs,” Mae said. “I just hope they’re not _all_ like that.”   
  
Ms. Dara snorted. “Keep hoping,” she said. “Wealthy families like that never incriminate each other— not unless there’s a _really_ good motive. You’re more likely to have them try to take the fall for each other unless you have concrete evidence.”   
  
“Well, no harm in trying,” Mae decided, standing back up. “Ms. Dara, is it? Where can I find you if we have questions?”   
  
“Oh, I’m here, usually,” Ms. Dara replied. “Come by any time. I’m happy to help.”   
  
“We should go interview Dr. Rothschild,” Boey said. “But we’ll be back later in case anything new pops up, Clair.”  
  
“Please do,” Clair nodded, tightening her necktie. “I’m up to my ears in work here, but I’m glad to have a break and talk about a case with actual forward momentum.”   
  
Mae winced in sympathy. “Good luck,” she said.   
  
“Thank you,” Clair sighed. “I’ll need it.”   
  
Mae and Boey took their leave, exiting the police station and going back to Mae’s car. Mae sat behind the wheel and frowned heavily at the road before starting the car and getting underway.   
  
“You really think one of the Rothschilds owns that knife?” Boey asked.   
  
“That’s gotta be it,” Mae nodded. “Why else would they all clam up like that when I mention it? I don’t know what they all have to hide, or why they’re hiding it, but we’re going to have to find out, no matter who it incriminates.”


	4. The Rothschilds

The Rothschild Museum of Natural History was the largest of all the Rothschild Institute museums, and it was where the main bulk of the business took place. It was where Rothsburg University’s relevant departments held lectures and seminars, where the archaeological shipments went for verification, where artifacts underwent restoration and processing for display, and, most importantly, where the curator, Reverend Dr. Arcturus Rothschild, held his meetings.  
  
The entrance opened into a cavernous exhibit hall full of old bones and artifacts in glass cases with little placards, though they all paled in comparison to the massive wyvern skeleton in the center of the hall, held up from the ceiling by meticulously-arranged wires. It was up on a platform ringed by a split-rail fence that prevented awestruck preschoolers from getting too close. The thing was easily the size of an elephant— maybe bigger. It was an awe-inspiring sight, and definitely the main draw of the museum.  
  
Mae whistled appreciatively underneath the din of the tour guides and museum patron chatter, sticking her hands in her pants pockets. “Get a load of that,” she said, jabbing her thumb at the skeleton. “You never get used to seeing how big this thing is, huh?”  
  
“I imagine the people who work here have to get used to it eventually,” Boey replied. “Do you suppose Dr. Rothschild is around here somewhere?”  
  
Mae scanned the exhibit hall. People milled around amongst the cases, tour guides leading groups on rotation to explain the highlights of the Rothschild Institute’s findings.  
  
“There,” Mae said, nodding to a group of grade-school kids in uniform clustered in front of the dragon statue, listening intently to a man in a cardigan and a bowtie. “That’s gotta be the good doctor.”  
  
They lingered at the back of the tour group. Dr. Rothschild spotted them, but didn’t let that interrupt his speech. He was explaining to the kids the big wyvern’s relationship to modern wyverns and how modern science and archaeology help them know that, and gesturing with his hands while he talked, like he would lose what he was trying to say if he let his hands still. He looked about forty and about a head taller than Mae, with the same curly red hair and scattered freckles as his younger sister, though his was pulled back in a low ponytail. His chin was scruffy, like he’d tried to shave but done it badly and couldn’t really be bothered to fix it. His suit was brown and his cardigan was beige, vaguely reminiscent of archaeologists’ khaki, and if Mae wasn’t mistaken, his purple satin bowtie was printed with very tiny skulls and bones.  
  
“… Really, there’s much we haven’t learned about our world’s history,” Dr. Rothschild said. “So much of what we could learn is limited by the constraints of even modern knowledge. But with every new artifact we uncover, we learn just a little bit more about the world we live in, and we’re one step closer to unraveling the mysteries of the past.”  
  
At the conclusion of his speech, the class of kids all clapped, and Dr. Rothschild smiled, clearly pleased at the reception. The class chorused their thanks when prompted by their teacher, and the teacher led them back to the rest of the exhibits. Dr. Rothschild stayed, and nodded to Mae and Boey.  
  
Mae got a few steps closer, craning her neck to look up at the skeleton. “Pretty incredible skeleton here, Doc,” she says. “I should bring my son by to see it sometime.”  
  
“I think any child would benefit from seeing such a creature, and learning that it used to walk this land,” Dr. Rothschild replied. “We could all learn something from the past, Detective.”  
  
Mae grinned, holding out her hand to shake. “What gave it away?” she asked. “But I guess I should’ve expected that kinda keen eye from the famous Reverend Dr. Rothschild. Detective Valentine, this is my partner, Mr. Dimitris.”  
  
“We spoke on the phone yesterday,” Boey added, holding his hand out. Dr. Rothschild shook Mae’s hand and Boey’s in turn.  
  
“Yes, you’re investigating my brother-in-law’s sudden disappearance,” Dr. Rothschild nodded. “Well, I’ll certainly help where I can. Celica is so fond of him— I can only imagine how difficult this is for her. Please, we should talk in my office— it’s quieter there.”  
  
Dr. Rothschild led them back through the museum, past rows of lecture halls and labs, until they reached a door with a frosted glass windowpane and a placard to the side that read _Rev. Dr. Arcturus E. Rothschild, Curator._ Dr. Rothschild unlocked the office with a key on a lanyard in his pocket and let them in. The inside of the office was quite nice— there was a wall full of bookshelves crammed with books, a set of display cases full of artifacts with tiny labels, a set of apothecary cabinets in the back, and a heavy desk in the center of the room with a clunky but dependable typewriter right in the middle.  
  
Dr. Rothschild gestured to a sitting area with three armchairs and a settee around a low table. “Please, sit,” he said. “Scotch?”  
  
“Thank you,” Mae nodded, sitting down in one of the armchairs. Boey took his notepad and pen out of his pocket, watching Dr. Rothschild take a bottle of scotch and a few glasses out of another cabinet and pour three glasses. Mae’s eye caught on a photo frame on the wall opposite her seat. The photo looked fairly recent, maybe a year or two old at most, and it showed a team of archaeologists squinting in bright desert sunlight around a massive skull— most likely the same skull of the wyvern in the exhibition hall. Most looked serious, but one of them, a young woman with short, curly hair and a little shovel sticking out of her pocket, was grinning widely with one hand shielding her eyes from the sun and the other resting on the big skull.  
  
Dr. Rothschild noticed her looking. “That was the day our dig team found the wyvern skull,” he explained, handing her a glass of scotch, which Mae took. “It was a huge find. I’m told it took ages to even get it out of the pit.”  
  
“Who’s the smiling one?” Mae asked, nodding to the photo.  
  
“My youngest sister, Sabine,” Dr. Rothschild replied, clearly trying not to beam with pride. “That was a few years ago, on one of her first digs as a student. She’s overseas right now, at a dig site in Thabes. She’s already sent back fascinating photos of Diiyusinae ruins— the precursors to Archanea’s northern nomadic tribes.”  
  
“Well, that’s good to hear,” Mae nodded. She swirled her scotch in her glass and took a sip. It tasted like burning rubber and mud and motor oil, so pungent in its sensation that even Mae coughed.  
  
She raised her glass to Dr. Rothschild. “Now that’s a damn fine scotch, Reverend.”  
  
Dr. Rothschild chuckled. “Well, I try. So, Detective Valentine, what do you want to know?”  
  
Mae shrugged. “Let’s start with your brother-in-law,” she decided. “What do you think of him?”  
  
“He’s a fine young man who makes my sister happy,” Dr. Rothschild said neutrally. “I may not have any desire to know the man personally, but I don’t think I need to. Celica can decide for herself who she wants to marry, and as long as she’s happy, I’m content to be happy for her.”  
  
“So, you had nothing against Albein Markel, really,” Mae summed up. “What about his family? Surely you met them at the wedding.”  
  
Dr. Rothschild hummed. “I did. I had a lovely conversation with his father about the similarities between some old Grustian tales and the tales from the Faiths we know here. Good man. Knows his history. His wife was very pleasant and charming, once she stopped crying of joy about her boy getting married. I didn’t get a chance to talk much with any of their younger children, though one did ask me if it was true that archaeologists have to navigate ancient tombs full of traps and anthrax dust in order to obtain their prize. I had to tell him no. He seemed very disappointed.”  
  
Mae nodded, taking a sip of her scotch. “And the others?”  
  
“I met his grandfather once when I was a boy, during the trial of my father’s death,” Dr. Rothschild said. “Suffice to say, Rudolf Markel did not engage much with me beyond small talk, likely because no one wants to discuss an old murder case on the day of their grandson’s wedding. I didn’t talk much to the cousin, Berkut, either, or his wife. But I was present to hear about Berkut losing several hands of blackjack to one of my sisters.”  
  
_Blackjack_. Mae glanced to Boey, who wrote that down and underlined it.  
  
Dr. Rothschild examined his scotch. “I’ll admit, I didn’t expect my sister to choose Albein Markel, of all people, to marry, but I suppose the heart wants what the heart wants.”  
  
Mae frowned. “I can’t imagine _how_ you’d expect that kind of thing, in this day and age,” she said.  
  
“Well,” Dr. Rothschild admitted. “He’s a Markel. I have nothing against Albein personally, but I’ll admit a little distrust for the whole of them.”  
  
“Over the Lima case?” Mae guessed.  
  
“In general,” Dr. Rothschild clarified. “The Rothschild family business used to involve smuggling illegal substances. A mail-order goods service would be an easy way to get things like drugs and arms subtly across the country. Little basis, I know— that’s why I’ve kept my opinion to myself.”  
  
“But I can imagine that’s another reason you didn’t engage much with Rudolf Markel,” Mae guessed. “As well as the business with the Lima case.”  
  
Dr. Rothschild sighed. “I could tell that the elder Mr. Markel didn’t trust me then, and likely doesn’t now,” he admitted. “He thought I had poisoned my father. That was why I was a suspect— I had won awards for chemistry in my school days, and I had been accepted to Rothsburg University before I’d even graduated. As such, I had use of their laboratories, and would’ve had access to medicinal substances like cocaine— an overdose of which had been proven to be my father’s cause of death. I was sixteen at the time.”  
  
“Who did you think was guilty, Reverend?” Mae asked.  
  
Dr. Rothschild looked Mae evenly in the eye. Mae met his gaze, but it was stormy, full of the same dignified, regal energy as his sister, but full of the experience and weathering that came from age and hardship— but above all, it was sharp and calculating like the blade of a razor, pinning Mae to her seat like a sample on a microscope slide. Dr. Rothschild was a holy man, an ordained priest of the Mila Faithful, but in those eyes, Mae did not see a priest, but a curator and a chemist and an elder brother who would go to lengths beyond measure to ensure the safety of his family.  
  
His gaze told Mae this: Reverend Dr. Arcturus Rothschild was not a man to make an enemy of.  
  
“My father was a bastard,” Dr. Rothschild says calmly. “Celica, who was two years old at the time, could very well have confessed to me that she killed our father by stuffing one of her alphabet blocks down his throat until he choked to death, and I wouldn’t say she was guilty.”  
  
Boey and Mae exchanged glances.  
  
“And if one of your siblings truly _were_ guilty of this crime, of kidnapping Albein Markel,” Mae said. “You wouldn’t say anything?”  
  
“I have no interest in breaking the law, Detective,” Dr. Rothschild replied. “Lying to the police is illegal, isn’t it?”  
  
“I’m not the police,” Mae retorted. “I care about finding the truth of who kidnapped my client’s husband. And since my client happens to be your sister, I think it’d be in your best interests to tell me the truth. The whole truth, Dr. Rothschild.”  
  
Dr. Rothschild pursed his lips a microscopic amount. “Very well,” he said. “Ask away, Detective Valentine.”  
  
Mae, looking Dr. Rothschild in the eyes, pulled on her gloves and took the card suit knife from the evidence bag. She placed it on the table between them.  
  
“Do you recognize this knife?” she asked.  
  
Dr. Rothschild shook his head. “No.”  
  
Mae’s gut told her he was lying. Every Rothschild affiliate she’d met had claimed not to recognize that damned knife, and it was getting to be suspicious. Mae hadn’t even mentioned the knife to Saber, only card games, and he still clammed up, which was practically a confession that he’d at least _seen_ it. Mae knew she was onto something, and clearly Dr. Rothschild did, too. He was lying about recognizing the knife, and he was a good enough liar that it’d fool an ordinary detective.  
  
Luckily, Mae was anything but.  
  
“Alright, Reverend,” Mae ceded, putting the knife back in the bag. “Do you know where I might find the other suspects from the Lima case now?”  
  
“Of course I do, and I’ll be glad to tell you,” Dr. Rothschild replied. He took a sip from his scotch. “Do you mind if I ask why the sudden interest in a case twenty-five years done?”  
  
“Well, as you suspected, Rudolf Markel has his suspicions,” Mae shrugged. “From the initial interview the police did, he seems to think that one of you holds a grudge left over from the investigation into your father’s death.”  
  
Dr. Rothschild’s face soured around his scotch. “I see.”  
  
“Do you have any thoughts on that, Dr. Rothschild?” Mae asked.  
  
Dr. Rothschild shrugged. “Well, I can tell you that I certainly don’t begrudge him for that reason. Even if I did, I wouldn’t kidnap his grandson over it.”  
  
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Mae said, nodding for Boey to write it down. “What about the other suspects?”  
  
Dr. Rothschild rubbed his scratchy chin in thought. “Well, my sister Octavia lives in Vimesville with her wife and children. Mrs. Butcher still works for her. Aunt Viktoriya joined the Sisters of Gratitude down in Rosley when Celica started university. As for Mr. Desaix…” he frowned. “He stopped working for us shortly after my father’s death. Last I heard, he works the night shift at the dockyards processing customs reports. Whatever it is, it’s little to do with Rothschild business.”  
  
“I think that’s all the information we need,” Mae decided, setting her empty glass of scotch down and getting to her feet. Boey snapped his notebook shut and tucked it back in his pocket. “But we’ll be in contact if new information comes up.”  
  
“I’m glad to help,” Dr. Rothschild promised, which Mae couldn’t help but doubt. “Shall I walk you out?”  
  
“We’ll manage,” Mae said. “You take care, Reverend.”  
  
Mae tipped her hat to Dr. Rothschild as she shut the office door behind her. She dropped her friendly grin in favor of a heavy sigh, rubbing her temples.  
  
“They’re all liars,” she seethed, once they were safely back into the public area of the museum. “Every last fucking one of those high-hats is a gods-damned fibber! I heard more bushwa in the croaker’s office than I did when we had to get in good with that fakeloo crew! If Doc Rothschild was on the level with us, I’m the queen of Archanea. Fuckin’ wisehead thinks he can pull a fast one and make me out to be some kinda palooka. Some kinda maroon he can chisel. Applesauce! C’mon, Boey, let’s ankle.”  
  
Boey whistled. “Did the Reverend really get you that riled up?”  
  
Mae slammed her car door shut, glowering at the parking lot. “He’s a good liar,” she grumbled. “I _hate_ it when they’re good liars.” 

* * *

  
The neighborhood of Rosley, along with most of its brethren, had gotten its start some eighty years back when assembly line manufacturing had come to Valentia, and as a result, the buildings lining Rosley’s cramped, narrow streets looked exactly as mass-produced as the goods made in the factories where most of its residents worked. Age and lack of funding made Rosley a jungle of crumbling brick and rain-streaked stucco, and two-lane roadways full of cracks and potholes that sloshed with muddy water when an unlucky tire fell into its depths. The buildings were packed together in rows like sardines lined up along a city block. Most of them were probably tenements, built on top of little businesses with crowded window displays. A sizable chunk that Mae and Boey passed looked to be abandoned entirely. But Rosley was in the same direction as Vimesville, so it only made sense to seek out Sister Viktoriya at the Sisters of Gratitude first.  
  
But just their luck, Sister Viktoriya wouldn’t be in until later— charity work could take ages, and they were better off finding her sometime on the weekend. So Mae maneuvered the car back out onto the southbound highway, bound for Vimesville. Suburbs and scenery sped by at sixty miles an hour. (The speed limit was forty, but Mae had never been content to let a sign tell her how fast to drive.) The scenery around Vimesville was sprawling vineyards and orchards dotted with farmhouses and barns. The country roads were dirt and ill-kept cobblestone, barely wide enough to accommodate Mae’s car. Vimesville itself looked like someone had taken a town from the era of the monarchy and stuffed in a few power lines, phone poles, gas pumps, and water heaters, just enough to connect it to the rest of society. Overall, it was tiny, outdated, and probably extremely boring to live there— it reminded Mae of home.  
  
The Rothschild estate sat about five minutes down a dirt road leading outside of Vimesville proper, nestled among more farmland. Estate probably wasn’t the right word— it was a nice farmhouse, but no bigger or more stately than any others they’d passed on the drive out. Mae parked the car on the side of the driveway behind a battered tractor and an empty flatbed trailer and finally turned the engine off.  
  
“Well, the day’s still young,” she said briskly, as Boey groaned and peeled himself out of the passenger’s seat. “You suppose we’ll get anything out of the eldest Mrs. Rothschild?”  
  
Boey stretched and every joint in his spine popped. “Who knows,” he said. “Here’s hoping she’s not as good a liar as the rest of her siblings, though I’m not getting my hopes up.”  
  
When Mae had pictured meeting the eldest Rothschild sibling, she’d pictured, essentially, the younger Mrs. Rothschild, but in her late forties— regal, elegant, and distinguished, acting carefully neutral and impartial when it came to Mae’s questions but clearly hiding something. She did not expect to enter the study to see a huge, muscled titan of a woman in slacks and suspenders with the sports section of a local newspaper in one hand and a glass of scotch in the other.  
  
The maid knocked on the opened door of the study. “Detective Valentine and her partner are here,” she said quietly to Mrs. Rothschild. Mrs. Rothschild startled, taking her feet off the ottoman. She was in her early forties, with the same vibrant red hair, dark olive skin, and smattering of freckles of all the Rothschilds Mae had met thus far. Her sleeves were pushed up, revealing an intricately inked dragon coiled around an aerial artillery gun, and her collar was unbuttoned enough that Mae caught a glimpse of military tags on a chain under her shirt. It took Mae a minute to realize that she wasn’t that much taller or broader than her brother, the Reverend, had been— of all the Rothschilds Mae had met thus far, Octavia Rothschild seemed the least afraid of the space she took up, reveling in her broadness by lounging in her armchair with her legs spread and one arm draped over the back.  
  
Octavia Rothschild stood up. Like her brother, she was about a head taller than Mae, even if she felt taller even than that. “I’d figured you’d be by,” she said. “Celica told me she’d be hiring a private detective to look into her husband’s disappearance.” She held her hand out for Mae to shake.  
  
Mae shook it. “That’s good, you know why I’m here. This is my partner, Mr. Dimitris— he’ll be taking notes, I hope you don’t mind.”  
  
“Not at all,” Mrs. Rothschild promised. “Scotch?”  
  
“Yes, thank you.”  
  
Mrs. Rothschild poured two more glasses of scotch— clearly a favorite among the elder Rothschilds. “So, Detective,” she said. “What d’you need to know from me?”  
  
Mae hummed, taking her glass. “Let’s start with the basics, Mrs. Rothschild,” she said. “What do you do for a living?”  
  
“I coach a local baseball team,” Mrs. Rothschild said. “We’re the Vimesville Vipers.” She nodded to a recent framed picture on the wall of two rows of kids in matching baseball jerseys holding caps and gloves, Mrs. Rothschild herself standing to the side with a bat on her shoulder. “Call me Coach Rothschild if you want— I know all the misses and missuses must get confusing.”  
  
“Coach Rothschild, alright,” Mae agreed, silently relieved there was a way to differentiate between siblings. “You know, I played baseball as a kid. I was on the Novis Hammerheads.”  
  
Coach Rothschild frowned. “Sorry, never heard of ‘em.”  
  
“Well, we weren’t very good.” Mae chuckled, taking a sip of her scotch. This one went down a little easier than Dr. Rothschild’s scotch, if only because that glass had killed all the nerves in her throat. “Can you tell me what you think of our missing man, Mr. Markel?”  
  
Coach Rothschild shrugged. “I don’t know him well,” she admitted. “But little Celica’s a fool for him, so he must be doing something right.”  
  
Mae thumbed the rim of her glass. “According to her, you threatened him at one point, should he ever do her wrong. You know how that looks now, don’t you?”  
  
Coach Rothschild narrowed her eyes, folding her arms and leaning back in her chair. “I stand by it,” she said. “I’d do the same for any of my siblings. But I’d have to have a reason.”  
  
“Have you had a reason to think that of Mr. Markel?” Mae asked.  
  
“Nope.” Coach Rothschild shook her head. “Up until he disappeared, all I ever heard about him from Celica is how happy she is— happy with the marriage, happy living with him, happy about their child. They found out just a few weeks ago that they’re expecting a daughter.” Coach Rothschild took a swig from her scotch. “Celica _acts_ above it all, but I’ve known her all her life. I would know if there was something wrong.”  
  
Mae’s gut told her that Coach Rothschild was telling the truth— either that or she was an insanely good liar, even better than the Reverend, which didn’t seem possible.  
  
“What about the other Markels,” Mae suggested. “You must’ve met them at the wedding.”  
  
Coach Rothschild hummed in thought. “Sure, I have,” she said. “Didn’t talk much to any of them. They seem decent folk, though.”  
  
“Even Rudolf Markel?” Mae asked. “I’m told you were both suspects on that case in ’96, with your father’s death.”  
  
Her face soured. “Yeah, I remember that,” she said. “Markel thought Arc had done it. I didn’t like that much. So’s you can imagine, we didn’t exactly get on back in ’96.”  
  
Mae hummed, furrowing her brow. “But you say they seem like decent folk now?”  
  
“Well, my father’s been dead for twenty-five years,” Coach Rothschild shrugged. “We’re both married with families and businesses, now— shit, Markel’s a _grandfather_. I’m not going to play billiards with the man anytime soon, but all the hooey from ’96 is water under the bridge.”  
  
“You seem to take your father’s death very lightly.”  
  
Coach Rothschild snorted. “The man was a bastard,” she said plainly. “He was a deadbeat, a rapist, and an obnoxious prick who coasted through life on the family fortune and didn’t give a damn who he hurt doing so, as long as he kept getting his money and his dope. I don’t think anyone offed him— I think the dope did before anyone else could— but if someone had, I wouldn’t blame them.”  
  
She took another sip of her scotch. “Shit, if I hadn’t just been accepted to the Airmen, I’d probably have killed him myself for—“ she faltered.  
  
Mae leaned forward. “For what?”  
  
Coach Rothschild shook her head and took another swig from her scotch. “Ancient history,” she said. “Like I said, the man was a bastard. Frankly, he’s lucky the dope killed him first.”  
  
Mae and Boey exchanged glances. “I’ll take your word for it, Coach Rothschild,” Mae said.  
  
“Why the interest, anyway?” Coach Rothschild asked. “I wouldn’t think an old unsolved case has much to do with a missing man now.”  
  
“Well, Rudolf Markel thinks otherwise,” Mae replied. “It’s just a hunch of his, but he told the police that he thinks one of you holds a grudge— that you think he should’ve hung for the crime then so the Rothschilds would get off scot-free.”  
  
Coach Rothschild snorted. “Well, it wasn’t me,” she said. “If I had a score to settle with Markel, I’d do it pistols at dawn. Not all of this bullshit— all the lying, scheming, and framing.”  
  
“If only all crimes were as straightforward as that,” Mae said wryly. “Though I suppose I’d be out of a job.”  
  
Coach Rothschild raised her half-empty scotch glass in agreement. “Hear, hear.”  
  
“I have just one more question for you, Coach Rothschild,” Mae continued. She nodded to Boey. Boey took the card suit knife from the evidence bag and set it on the table between them, next to the bottle of scotch. Coach Rothschild’s face turned a shade paler.  
  
“The police found this knife at the scene where Albein Markel vanished,” she said. “Do you recognize it?”  
  
Coach Rothschild coughed. “No,” she said. “I’ve never seen that knife before.”  
  
So Mae’s gut was right— Coach Rothschild had been telling the truth, and Mae could tell because unlike her brother, she was a terrible liar. That made things a little bit easier. The issue remained, though: which Rothschild _did_ that knife belong to?  
  
Mae nodded slowly, putting the knife back into the bag and standing back up. “Alright, Coach Rothschild,” she said. “Thank you for your time. We just need to interview your nursemaid, Sabrina Butcher, and then we’ll be on our way.”  
  
Coach Rothschild set her scotch down. “Of course, Detective,” she said. “The maid can show you the way there.”  
  
Mae raised her empty scotch glass to Coach Rothschild and set it back down, sticking a hand in her pocket. “I appreciate it,” she said. “And, I might add— that’s a damn fine scotch.”

* * *

  
Sabrina Butcher essentially looked and spoke exactly like her son, if her son were a seventy-year-old woman, and offered Mae and Boey saltwater taffies that went accepted but uneaten. Unfortunately, she couldn’t tell them anything new about the Markels— she hadn’t formally met any of them except for Rudolf, during the case in ’96, and her memory just wasn’t as sharp as it once was— and, just like the rest of the Rothschilds, claimed not to recognize the knife.  
  
“Though, I will say,” Mrs. Butcher admitted. “I don’t trust that old egg. Don’t think he killed old Mr. Rothschild or the like, but, you know— rich folk.”  
  
Mae nodded. “So you don’t trust the Markels because they’re rich?”  
  
“I don’t know if they’re the good hats or the bad ones,” Mrs. Butcher explained. “The children are good ones— their father, now, he was the worst kind.” She tutted, looking down at the knitting on her lap. “Didn’t work for him long, but I saw first hand how he ran things, aye. Thought the world belonged to him.” She scowled. “Awful man. Can’t blame whoever killed him.”  
  
That seemed to be the sentiment that everyone who’d ever met Lima Rothschild shared. “Do you remember why you would’ve?” Mae asked.  
  
Mrs. Butcher frowned. “Can’t rightly,” she admitted. “Probably just for poor Viktoriya— she dealt with him longest, you know. Raised his children when their mothers died or left. Somethin’ had to give.”  
  
“I’ve heard a lot about this Viktoriya,” Mae said. “Dr. Rothschild tells me she joined a religious sisterhood in Rosley.”  
  
“Aye, I s’pose she’s Sister Viktoriya now,” Mrs. Butcher corrected herself. “We were the nursemaids for the littler Rothschilds while they were growing— saw ‘em all off to college, saw most of ‘em married. Viktoriya delivered Octavia’s little ones,” she added. “She and I were close friends— s’pose any two nannies would be, in our shoes. Though I don’t think poor Tori ever really got over the death of her wife.”  
  
“Sister Viktoriya was married?” Mae asked.  
  
“Well, not legally,” Mrs. Butcher admitted. “But, well— when ye love someone, _really_ love them in yer heart of hearts, ye don’t need a fancy paper to prove it, aye?”  
  
“Guess not,” Mae shrugged.  
  
Mrs. Butcher sighed. “They were in love, aye. But poor Liprica died when little Celica was born, and I don’t think Tori ever healed. She joined the Sisters of Gratitude when Celica went to university, and she comes to visit with her boy Conrad sometimes, but we don’t really keep in touch. Bein’ a Sister is busy, aye, and I have my hands full here.”  
  
“I can imagine,” Mae agreed. Then she coughed. “Thank you, Mrs. Butcher, you’ve been very helpful. We’ll get out of your hair now, but if you remember anything else, don’t hesitate to call.”  
  
“Aye, you two take care,” Mrs. Butcher said genially.  
  
“And you, Mrs. Butcher,” Mae replied, tipping her hat to Mrs. Butcher as she shut the door behind Boey, who still had his notebook out and was looking at Mae in disbelief.  
  
“We barely got anything we didn’t already know out of her,” Boey whispered as they walked back down the hallway, making their way out of the Rothschild estate.  
  
“Listen, yeah, it wasn’t much,” Mae admitted. “But listen— Sister Viktoriya’s wife was Mrs. Rothschild’s mother, right? If she died when her daughter was an infant, that would’ve been two years before Lima Rothschild’s death.”  
  
Boey frowned. “You think Lima Rothschild had a hand in Mrs. Liprica’s death, and Sister Viktoriya killed him in revenge?”  
  
“Could be,” Mae said. “And I doubt I’m the only one who thinks that. I think someone on the Markel side thinks that, too.”  
  
“So, maybe someone was trying to frame Rudolf for Lima Rothschild’s murder, but he was found innocent, so they’re trying to frame him for something else now?” Boey frowned. “That follows, but why kidnap Mr. Markel? And how do we explain the evidence pointing to the Markels that we found at the crime scene?”  
  
Mae pursed her lips. “Not sure yet,” she admitted, tipping her hat goodbye to the maid that escorted them back out. “We’re going to have to follow up with the Markels as well. You found your way into their party yet?”  
  
Boey sighed. “No, not yet. Though I do know that how we did it in Callensbridge is right out— unless Mr. Markel’s rented line dancers to entertain at this executive business function.”  
  
“I still say you made that skirt look swell,” Mae replied, pulling the car out of the driveway and back onto the country road. “Nothing wrong with showing a little gam now and then.”  
  
“I showed a lot more gam than anyone at that shindig needed to see,” Boey muttered.  
  
“Well, then, here’s hoping you won’t need to disguise yourself as a cocktail waitress, ya big patsy,” Mae replied. “Anyway, let’s leave tomorrow for tomorrow. We still need to track down Desaix and see if he’s any more helpful.”  
  
“None of the other Rothschild affiliates really mentioned him,” Boey noted. “They must not be as close.”  
  
Mae grinned at the unpaved road. “Perfect. Maybe we’ll learn something after all.”

* * *

  
They found Mr. Desaix in a tiny concrete building with lightbulbs that flickered every time an arriving ship blew its horn. It wasn’t difficult to do so; Dr. Rothschild had said he worked in the dockyards processing customs reports, and it didn’t take a detective to deduce that the portly, balding man behind the only open customs desk in the building was the man they were looking for. He had the air of a man who was not as well-off as he once was and was quite self-pitying about it.  
  
He raised a brow over the papers on his desk, and his lip curled in bitter distaste when he noticed Mae’s and Boey’s finely-tailored suits. “Can I help you, gentlemen?” he asked, sounding at once bored and stubbornly haughty, as if it was all he could cling to to retain some dignity.  
  
Mae pulled her P.I license out of her front pocket. “Detective Valentine,” she said. “This is my partner, Mr. Dimitris. We were hoping you might answer some questions about Albein Markel.”  
  
Mr. Desaix humphed. “Never heard of him. You two are wasting your time.”  
  
“Have you heard of Lima Rothschild?” Mae asked in reply. “A little bird told me that you used to work for him, until his untimely death in ’96.”  
  
At that, Mr. Desaix eyed Mae suspiciously. “What could I know about Mr. Rothschild that connects to your missing man?”  
  
“That’s what I’m trying to find out.” Mae leaned on the desk with one hand and flashed him a toothy grin. “C’mon, pal. I bet you could use a break from all that work.”  
  
Mr. Desaix grimaced, but set his papers down. “Fine. Ask away, Detective.”  
  
Mae tipped her hat in silent thanks. “So, Mr. Desaix,” she began. “I don’t doubt that you’ve never met Albein Markel, but surely you’ve heard the name. I’ve heard the Markels and the Rothschilds had a bit of a row, back in the day.”  
  
“That was a long time ago,” Mr. Desaix admitted. “But I’ve engaged with Markel Enterprises before. Rudolf Markel— he’s the one who argued with Mr. Rothschild the night he died. Mr. Rothschild would always complain to me about him, saying he didn’t know when to cut his losses.”  
  
“What did you do for Mr. Rothschild, before he died?” Mae asked.  
  
“I was his assistant,” Mr. Desaix replied. He grimaced. “He was an awful man. He didn’t deserve his fortune. The world’s a better place with him gone.”  
  
“I’m told many people felt that way about him,” Mae said. “You certainly would’ve stood to gain if he died.”  
  
“I would have,” Mr. Desaix agreed. “But I didn’t kill him. I spent that night at the automobile club in Beverly, which the police found to be true— you’d know that if you read the case file.”  
  
“I’m not here to accuse you of a murder that happened twenty-five years ago, Mr. Desaix,” Mae reminded him. “I’m here because Rudolf Markel’s grandson disappeared from his home a week ago, and he suspects a Rothschild affiliate come to take revenge.”  
  
Mr. Desaix scoffed. “Revenge on Mr. Rothschild’s death? Preposterous! Everyone despised the man!”  
  
“Not on his death,” Mae said. “But on the hunch that whichever one of you killed him wanted Rudolf to hang for it.”  
  
Mr. Desaix looked like he wanted to laugh, but then he hesitated, putting his hand to his chin. He had an oily-looking mustache that didn’t quite reach his equally oily chinstrap beard. Mae could smell him from across the desk, and he smelled like stale seaweed and past regrets.  
  
“Well, I never liked the Markels myself,” Mr. Desaix admitted. “For a brief period of time, we were business rivals— I disliked them because Lima Rothschild disliked them, and Lima Rothschild disliked them because their success would mean less money. And I appreciate being paid, you understand.”  
  
“Go on.”  
  
“And _I_ did not kill him, Detective,” Mr. Desaix repeated. “But if anyone did, back then…” he looked around, as if worrying they were being watched. “I didn’t say this then, because Lima’s brute of an eldest daughter would’ve strangled me for it. But if anyone killed that man, it would’ve been one of the nannies— Viktoriya.”  
  
Mae frowned thoughtfully. “If what Mrs. Butcher said about Viktoriya and Liprica being lovers is true, then Viktoriya definitely had motive.”  
  
Mr. Desaix coughed. “Well, I wouldn’t know anything about that. Really, I don’t know anything else. Good luck on the rest of your investigation, Detective.” He suddenly looked very interested in his paperwork, jotting down numbers that likely didn’t even make sense.  
  
Mae sighed. “That’s all we’re getting out of him, looks like,” she mumbled to Boey. “Well, Mr. Desaix, you’ve been a big help. If you know anything else, don’t hesitate to phone.” She set one of her business cards on his desk.  
  
Mr. Desaix nodded. Something had clearly agitated him, but Mae clearly wasn’t going to find out why. “Of course, Detective, I certainly will. Goodnight.”  
  
Mae tipped her hat again and left the building with Boey a step behind, holding his hat down over his head so the cold night breeze off the ocean wouldn’t blow it away as they made their way to the car.  
  
“He definitely knew something,” Boey said. “The way he clammed up like that? He has to have done that for a reason.”  
  
“It’s like he worried he said too much,” Mae mumbled. “Say, Boey. If Liprica and Sister Viktoriya were lovers, and Liprica died when our Mrs. Rothschild was born in ’94, and her father was Lima Rothschild… would you say that’s motive for murder?”  
  
“If she blamed him for her wife’s death? Sure,” Boey shrugged. “People kill for love all the time. But we weren’t hired to find out who killed Lima Rothschild, Mae.”  
  
“Right, true,” Mae replied, getting behind the wheel of the car. “But say Rudolf Markel’s hunch is correct, and whoever murdered Lima Rothschild wanted him to hang for it. All that anger and resentment, stirring inside for twenty-five years— that murderer’s got a grudge.”  
  
Boey squinted at her. “What are you thinking, Mae?”  
  
“I’m thinking,” Mae decided. “That come tomorrow, we’re going to have a talk with Sister Viktoriya.”

* * *

  
The night of May 13th, Mae went back to her home expecting that she’d have all of the next day to devote to tracking down Sister Viktoriya. The morning of May 14th, she learned that she was wrong.  
  
The phone rang during breakfast. They’d squished in another place setting for Mrs. Rothschild, who looked a little awkward sitting between Boey and Tempest, but she wasn’t complaining. Brownie sat on her lap, eyeing her breakfast sausage, which was mostly uneaten. Saber stood up to get the phone before Silque did.  
  
“Valentine residence,” he said gruffly. “Butcher speakin.’ Who is this?”  
  
“This is Detective-Inspector Clair Heartwood,” Clair said on the other end of the line. “I need to speak with Detective Valentine, immediately, if you please.”  
  
“Oi, Detective,” Saber called.  
  
“Just a second!” Mae dropped her plate by the sink on her way out of the kitchen and took the handset from Saber. “Hello?”  
  
_“I apologize for interrupting your breakfast, Detective,”_ Clair said. _“But this is urgent. It’s about Mr. Desaix, the suspect you interviewed last night.”_  
  
Mae frowned. “What about him?”  
  
_“He’s been murdered.”_

* * *

  
It didn’t take long for Mae to find the scene, considering the police line blocking off one of the piers from the rest of the shore and trying to keep curious civilians away. They moved aside for Mae and Boey when she held up her badge. No sooner had she gotten within twenty feet of the scene when the reek of rotting meat hit her nose.  
  
Mae grimaced. “This case just keeps gettin’ more complicated. You see the body?”  
  
“Yeah,” Boey agreed. “He’s all over the pier.”  
  
Clair had been crouching in front of the body, covered with a sheet. She stood and waved them over. “Try not to breathe in too deeply,” she suggested. “Mr. Dimitris, you may want to stand back. It’s rather… gory.”  
  
Boey sighed, rubbing his temples. “This is _just_ like the cannery.”  
  
“In my defense,” Mae said. “Neither of us saw this one coming.”  
  
Mae crouched next to the body with Clair. Clair pulled the sheet back.  
  
Gory was an understatement. Most of the body was intact— in a manner of speaking. It still had arms and legs and a head. The rest of the scene, though, looked like all his organs had been ripped out, shredded, and strewn around the pier in a ten-foot radius. Mae felt nauseous. Clair grimaced in sympathy.  
  
“It’s times like this I’m reminded why I love my job,” she said. “But yes. Constable Chun came across him about an hour ago on a morning patrol. According to him, the body was still fresh, but he didn’t see anyone else around.”  
  
“Looks like he got ripped apart by an animal,” Mae mused. “Except for the part where most of the meat is still here. Plus, an animal wouldn’t have left the limbs and head alone in favor of shredding the torso, but not eating it.”  
  
“My thoughts exactly,” Clair agreed. “This was done with intent. Do you suppose it’s connected to the Markel case?”  
  
“That was what I’d assumed,” Boey called from a safe distance. “Desaix getting bumped off the very night after we interviewed him asking about Mr. Markel and the Rothschild murder? It’s too close to be a coincidence.”  
  
“It’s absolutely connected,” Mae agreed. “Look at this— this isn’t just another murder. Whoever killed him _wanted_ him to be found. They’re making a point.”  
  
“We’ve also found this,” Clair added, pulling out an evidence bag. She put on a pair of gloves and fished out another bloody knife.  
  
Mae hummed. “Strikes me as odd, though,” she said. “That this is just a regular kitchen knife. And, I mean, you can’t do any of that with _just_ a knife, not without a lot of time and trouble. I don’t think that’s our murder weapon.”  
  
“It’s still evidence,” Clair replied. “And it’s the only piece of evidence we’ve found at the scene thus far. If this is connected, then this knife is part of your case, too.”  
  
Mae rubbed her chin. She furrowed her brow, looking over the body. She had a bad feeling about this— a building apprehension lodged in her gut. What was causing it, though, was a mystery to her. It was times like this Mae wished her intuition were a little more specific.  
  
“Hey,” she realized, noticing something in Desaix’s pocket. “Here’s something.”  
  
She reached in and pulled out a folded piece of paper. Unfolded, it was a cheap greeting card, probably ten cents at a convenience store. The back was plain, but the front was all pink and red hearts, with script that read _to my dearest_. Mae felt like she’d been punched.  
  
“Valentine’s Day,” Clair thought aloud. “How strange. That was months ago, and yet the card looks like it’s just been printed.”  
  
“A what?” Boey, doing his best not to look at Desaix’s body, moved over to Clair and Mae. “A Valentine’s Day card? Strange, but I’m sure there’s a logical reason for this. Maybe Desaix forgot to give it to someone on the day itself.”  
  
“If that were the case,” Clair said pragmatically. “The card would be visibly aged, being folded up in a pocket like that. This card is still stiff.”  
  
“It is odd,” Boey admitted. “Are we sure this is connected? I don’t know what it could possibly mean.”  
  
“I know what it means,” Mae said abruptly, getting to her feet. “Look at this. There’s nothing written in the card.”  
  
Boey frowned, standing to look at the open card. “Why buy a card, only to fold it up and stick it in a dead man’s pocket without even writing anything in it?”  
  
“Boey, listen,” Mae said. “What kind of card is this? _Valentine’s Day_. What month is it? _May_.”  
  
Boey turned pale, horror dawning over his face. “You mean…”  
  
“It’s a May Valentine,” Mae said gravely, holding up the card. “Desaix’s murderer left his body out here, mangled like this, to be sure that we’d find him, and then put this card in his pocket not for the police to find— but for _me_.”  
  
“Which can only mean one thing,” Clair murmured.  
  
“This wasn’t just a message,” Mae said. “It’s a warning.”


End file.
